


Nothing Like You

by steamworkBlue



Series: Nothing Like You & Bonus Features [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Anxiety, Autistic Character, Autistic Kylo Ren, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Mental Illness, Non-Binary Kylo Ren, Non-binary character, Pre-Slash, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Slice of Life, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character, Trans Hux, Trans Kylo Ren, Trans Phasma, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6481021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steamworkBlue/pseuds/steamworkBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following an incident of the previous spring, Kylo Ren finds himself shipped off to his uncle's cabin for the summer by forces - namely parental - beyond his control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my dear friend [invernom,](http://invernom.tumblr.com/) who has been an immense help as someone to bounce ideas off of, and who has been helping me illustrate this fic. c: 
> 
> Re: the tag warnings: all the mental illness/related shit are descriptions of such from second person pov. There is reference to pov teacher-child abuse and to non-pov parent-child abuse.
> 
> Re: Kylux: please note that Hux is never actually going to show up in this fic outside of Kylo's internal monologue and occasional letters relayed via Phasma, and they're neither dating nor will be before the fic ends. However within the confines of Kylo's internal monologue, Hux is a pretty darn major character, and Kylo's gay as hell for him.
> 
> No knowledge of plot events or characters in Harry Potter necessary. Basic knowledge of the general Harry Potter universe helpful.

The cabin in which you are to spend the next two and a half months of your life sits on the rocky shore of a lake in Oregon, roughly eleven hours and five thousand miles from where you started. You can't say that's where you'd rather be, back home - this summer fate seems no worse than any you could've been allotted. At least this way you get some time away from your parents, not that - the old familiar bitterness welling in your mouth - you see them much anyway. And your uncle is-- alright. He doesn’t act any weirder around you than anyone else, at least, most of the time. He had joked with your mother earlier about spoiling you, but you don't know to what extent he intends to deliver.

You hang behind while he crunches up to the porch with his suitcases, looking up at your new home. It's not as big as the one you usually occupy with your parents, which makes sense, Uncle Luke doesn't live here either. The wood and stone of the facade are weathered, but you're not sure if they're actually old, or just posing. It's almost too picturesque: the wooden porch with half-stone pillars, the log siding, the surrounding forest and backyard that opens right to the water. You can see the brochure now: come to cosy Middle of Nowhere, Oregon, the perfect place to isolate your violent, oddball, failure of a nephew as a preference to having him committed.

You snort a little to yourself and follow Uncle Luke up the front walk. He finishes fiddling with the door lock and lets the two of you inside. The door disturbs a year or more’s worth of dust, scattering it into the lines of sunlight filtering through the window blinds. ‘Home sweet home,’ he says, setting his cases down. ‘C’mon, I'll show you where to put your stuff.’

You follow him upstairs, dragging your trunk after you. ‘That's usually Rey’s room,’ he says, indicating a door a short ways off the landing, ‘but there's a guest room down the hall.’ He leads you there, as if you can't find it yourself, even takes you inside. It's furnished, but boring, no more descript than the rest of the house. There's no sheets on the bed.

‘Thanks,’ you say, flatly.

He catches the sarcasm; you intended him to. You catch the aborted sigh. ‘I'll get you some bedding.’

He leaves you. You can hear him rooting around in the closet you passed in the hallway. You drag your trunk over to the corner by the dresser and drop your backpack down on top of it. Quickly, before Uncle Luke returns, you fish your wand out of the hidden inner pocket and slip it into the right pocket of your jeans. He wouldn’t let you keep it on you on the plane; something about the spirit of being armed. Whatever. He just doesn’t like the idea of _you_ being armed, and didn’t carry his own so you wouldn’t gripe. You’re surprised he let you keep it in your carry-on, but that would have been disastrous had your luggage gotten lost, so. 

(That’s your least favourite part about flying, the idea of strangers handling and potentially losing your things. You asked why you couldn’t go by side-along apparition or floo powder about twelve times despite knowing full well the Atlantic Ocean is too big and America has a separate floo network. It’s not that you’re unused to travelling - no way that could happen with your parents - but you know you can get away with pestering Uncle Luke. It’s satisfying, to be able to make it repeatedly known that you’re unhappy with the arrangements, that you don’t like being separated from your things.

On the other hand, you really love flying, be it by plane or broom or whatever you can manage.)

Uncle Luke comes back a few moments later. ‘Well, we don’t have any sheets that aren’t musty, but I’ll run some through the wash. Do you want to go check out the place, get unpacked?’

‘Yes,’ you say, quickly, glad he didn’t offer to give you a tour. You zip your backpack back up and leave the room before he does.

‘Hey, Kylo,’ he says before you get more than a couple steps down the hall, and you stop in your tracks, head picked suddenly up, before turning to face him. He’s been using your name since you first set out at the airport, and you’re still not used to it, still not sure what it means. Does he just use B- that other one-- when talking to your parents for their sake, like the two of you are in on a secret, or like he’s trying to keep them appeased? Or are you the one he’s trying to appease, garner your favour via the luxury of an adult acknowledging your real name? Your chest feels tingly. ‘What?’

‘Don’t go too far from the house, okay?’ That means you won’t get in trouble if you leave so long as you come back before he worries. Good. It surprises you a little that he's not keeping you under lock and key after the events of the spring, but no matter. You have some freedom, and that's what's important. ‘There’s nothing in these woods that’ll hurt you other than the usual, you know, gravity, I just don’t want you getting lost.’

You nod.

‘And remember what I said earlier about magic use.’

You nod again, and swallow. He must know you pocketed your wand the second you were alone. Did he hear you, or are you just that predictable?

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. ‘Be back by four, okay? We’ve gotta figure out what we’re gonna do about food.’

Nod.

‘Alright, get going.’

You snap away from standing at attention and scurry downstairs. You don’t stop to investigate the layout of the house like you were intending when he first suggested it, wanting very much, all of a sudden, to get outside, to get away.

You venture a little past the front yard before getting out your phone to see how much time you have. It’s 3:07. Right. You pocket it - different pocket from your wand, you like to be able to grab both fast - and set off into the woods.

(Back across the sea, before you left, Uncle Luke had taken you aside, your parents talking several doors away, out of earshot. ‘I know you know underage magic is legal in America,’ he told you in an undertone, and the pounding of your heart at being singled out by an adult increased tenfold. ‘And we’re going to be out in the middle of the woods most of the time, so I’m not going to stop you from doing it. But-’ the elation that briefly blossomed in your chest gave way once more to fear. ‘-I know you. And I know it’d be foolish to say I expect you to be responsible with this. So I’m laying down some ground rules. No magic when we’re in town. You can’t even bring your wand into town, there’s no reason for it. Nothing if there’s any signs of muggles being around. Nothing that might get noticed from a distance, either. And nothing potentially dangerous. At all. I know you’re not the best judge of the last one-’ your face had warmed but you kept looking at him, staring him down ‘-but you’ve got to promise me you’re going to take this seriously. If you can’t follow these rules, I can’t let you have this.’

Let you have this. As if your natural abilities, the things that course through your veins and bones, could be given and taken from you like a privilege. In this particular instance you knew it wasn’t inaccurate, but you still hated the thought. Still do, too. ‘I promise,’ you had said, firm and purposeful.

You had felt, then, staring at each other, like he had recognised some of the light blazing in your eyes. ‘Well, stick to it,’ he had said, and walked away.

You didn’t realise til later that night that he probably discussed this with your parents beforehand - behind your back, your parents not daring to speak to you themselves, sending Uncle Luke to play good cop and getting you to agree to what they wanted by dangling conditional treats in front of your nose - and spent the next while trying to fall asleep while curled up in a gangly ball of rage. When you realised you were falling for it you gave up on that sleeping thing and threw all the books on your bedside table at the opposite wall.)

You’re still rageful now at the memory, settling down on a boulder some distance from the cabin, but you have bigger and better fish to fry, enough so to calm you enough to start the fire. Literally, in this case. You take the robust-looking stick you selected on your way over here, slip your wand from your pocket, and touch the tips of the two pieces of wood together. ‘Incendio,’ you whisper, and a small flame appears at the point where the two meet. You hold the stick up against the sky and watch the flame grow as it eats, watch the stick turn black and shriveled, triumph burning bright within you.

‘Aguamenti,’ you say when the flame strays painfully close to your hand, dousing both with a jet of water from your wand. You hold the stick for a moment, admiring the thing, already dead, that you desecrated, before dropping it and wiping your hand on your jeans. 

You look around for inspiration as to what to do next, and point your wand confidently at an object several yards away from you. ‘Accio pinecone.’ It zooms into your waiting hand. ‘Wingardium leviosa.’ You make it fly a few laps around your head before flinging it into the distance with a sharp flick of your wrist. You hear it hit a tree with a soft _thwap_ ; a bird caws indignantly and takes off. You breathe out a laugh to yourself.

You hop off the rock, landing on the burnt twig, which breaks into ashy pieces. You take a moment to dig your heel into each segment, making them splinter into pale papery flakes, before turning to face your erstwhile perch. It’s quite large, about as tall as you are; you were only able to access the top of it via smaller rocks nearby. You stand back, assessing your canvas. ‘Diffindo.’ You slash your wand downwards, fluid and in time with the verbal portion of the spell. It leaves a shallow but visible gouge in the rock. ‘Diffindo.’ A short horizontal jab, forming in tandem with the last cut something that might be a simplistic sword and might be an upside-down cross. You approach it; run your fingers along your handiwork. The edges are sharp and rough and you let out a soft ‘ah’ of pain when you slice your fingertips open appreciating this fact.

Your hand looks rather good like this, actually, even if it hurts - the vibrantly red blood stark against your pale, desaturated skin - and lost in this thought, you smear it against the sword in the stone, completing your masterpiece. For a moment the world boils down to you and that rock; you: numb and distant and contemplating beauty, the rock: feeling nothing whatsoever but somehow more than a rock, somehow more than a rock and a symbol of your victory against whoever it is you’re constantly fighting. And then you remember Uncle Luke will probably be mad about your hand, and the magic, the whatever it is, breaks.

You try to remember the healing spell you’ve seen Hux use. ‘Episkey,’ you say, imagining his crisp, businesslike tone and sure that that’s it. Your fingers feel like they’re on fire and for a split second you panic before they feel very cold and then feel like very little. The red underflesh is still visible, but the blood is no longer shiny; you must’ve reapplied only a very thin layer of skin. You should’ve expected this, you’ve never performed this spell before, but you still frown at the betrayal of your wand and power. ‘Episkey,’ you repeat, more forcefully this time, and then wave the hand around with your mouth open in silent pain because, no, _now_ your fingers feel like they’re on fire. You breathe in sharply at the following sensation of splintering ice, and when you open your eyes you can’t feel your fingers but the cuts have been reduced to vivid pink indentations you can probably pass off as something innocuous.

You breathe heavy for a few moments, not thinking about how you just forced new flesh into existence, staring at the blood smear on the rock. It looks super metal. Fuck, _metal_. You didn’t do that on purpose. You laugh, out loud, your voice sounding strange against the quiet of the woods. You take a few pictures with your phone, including some selfies of you and your blood rock. Half your time’s up. You wish you had friends who owned electronics, and furthermore that you got internet out here. You actually like the way you look in these pictures, as rare a treat as any you're currently being fed: your sallow skin mottled by the sunlight filtering through the forest, your dark eyes wild behind clusters of flyaway brown hair, the scar that bisects your face barely noticeable.

You fully intend, as you circle back the way you came, to return to the blood rock later. You cast a sealant charm on it - the same one Phasma taught you to do on your nail polish - before you left so if it rains you can get an even sweeter picture of it without having to worry about it washing off. You hope you can get in contact with her; your one regret about not staying home for the summer is owls can't cross the Atlantic. But she was going to look into regular visits to library computers, bolstered by your descriptions and her muggle studies class. You'll have to find a wi-fi connection soon; you left your email with her before parting. You're sure she can figure out the internet given the means. She's smart.

(You're not foolish enough to hope Hux could get to a computer without risking life and limb - his parents would never allow him within a twelve mile radius of muggle technology - but Phasma promised to play messenger. You still wish you could hear from him yourself. The sporadic letters of last summer were so, so much better than nothing.)

You reach the shore in the wide arc you're taking back to the cabin. You walk the line where the water licks the rocks, looking at the muddy sand and debris under the thin layer of glass-clear water. On a whim - you have, like, twenty minutes left - you toe off your converse and roll up the legs of your jeans to your knees. The sand swirls around your feet as you wade slowly in, muddying your personal patch of water. You can feel all the small, smooth stones and shells of the aquatic undergrowth dig into the soles of your feet, not quite painful. The water is pleasantly cool, and you wade in til you get the edges of your jean cuffs wet. The far coast of the still, flat lake is barely visible on the horizon. You dig your toes into the mud.

You think again of that imaginary brochure for your picture-perfect cabin, and now, this picture-perfect lake. A gust of wind ripples your hair, the water. You feel like a piece of litter.

You wade back to shore, legs digging long furrows in the water. Rather than shove your damp, oversized feet back into your high tops, you pick your way barefoot along the rocky beach. This particular mix of rocks _does_ hurt, but you don't mind, not really. You go slow, occasionally reaching down to scoop up a skipping rock. You try to skip one via magic the same way you threw the pinecone, flinging it across the water. It doesn't work, but it does make a satisfyingly large splash when it hits the water at an angle a satisfyingly far distance out.

You reach the vicinity of the cabin two minutes late. Uncle Luke is sitting on the front steps. Is he waiting for you already? It's been two fucking minutes. 

‘Hey,’ he says as you approach, looking up from writing in a notebook.

‘Hey,’ you grunt, and, not seeing any way out of this, plop down beside him.

‘I’m making a shopping list. Is there anything you want?’

You shrug.

‘Come on, you've got to eat this stuff too. I haven't seen you in a while, what sort of stuff do you like?’

‘I dunno. A lot of things.’ You tell yourself you should be jumping at the opportunity to influence your fate like this. But you can't think of anything right now.

‘You can pick some stuff out when we get to the store.’

‘Sure.’

He adds something to the list. ‘So what'd you get up to?’

You shrug again. ‘Just. Went for a walk.’

‘Did you see anything cool?’

‘No.’

He turns his head to look at you. You stare at your dirty feet, dig them into the rough, weathered wood of the step beneath them.

‘Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?’

He's trying to lure you out of your shell. You can't decide between taking advantage and not letting him win. You shrug. He sighs. ‘Is there anything you want to talk about?’

The question startles you. ‘No,’ you say, quickly, loudly. You don't dare look up, but you can tell he's looking at you like he doesn't believe you, or like he pities you, or shit, _something_ you don't want to see. You grip your elbows hard, and hear him sigh again.

‘How about we go get the shopping done and see how you're feeling after?’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ He's trying to be nice, get you to open up, which is dumb, because you're not hiding anything. He's acting a lot like your mother does sometimes, which means it's only going to be so long until he gets tired of you refusing to take his stupid little olive branches and starts demanding things of you instead. You intend to push him til he reaches that point, just to see where it is, and because you _can_ , and also because you don't want his manipulative attempts at kindness. You don't need them. He's only doing this because he wants something from you, even if you don't know what it is outside of your cooperation. Better that you goad him into laying it bare and ordering you outright, rather than continuing these stupid little games.

‘Hose your feet off before we go, they're filthy. And leave your wand in the house.’

This isn't what you're thinking of, he's still being kindly. ‘Where's the hose?’

‘Round the side here by the garage, I can show you.’

‘I can find it.’ You get up and head for the garage before he can argue.

On the plane ride over here, you thought spending a summer in your uncle's company might be alright. Better than spending it with your parents, at least. He calls you by your real name, and doesn't comment on your every movement and decision, and offered you coffee when he bought himself some at the airport. If you're being honest with yourself, you're not sure what it is that turned you off of him so quickly. Maybe you just cottoned on to the fact that he's an adult. (Maybe it’s because Snoke did all those things, too.)

You lean against the garage while you rinse off your feet, wrestling them into your shoes wet so they don't pick up any more dirt. Rather than go round the front you proceed through a side door near the hose. It opens into a mud room crowded with storage. You glance over some of the items - a sled, an axe, a few colourful windbreakers - but don't linger before slipping through a door and into a hall from which you can see the living room.

You go back upstairs to stash your wand back in the hidden pocket from whence it came before rejoining Uncle Luke on the front porch. He turns round, looking unsurprised to see you coming from inside the house. ‘Ready to go?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Alright, just let me lock up.’ He tears the top page out of the notebook and goes to stash the remainder inside and grab his keys before locking the front door. He’s put the dark glove he wears to keep muggles from inquiring about his magical prosthesis back on. You don’t know whether or not he has his wand with him. You would, if you had the power to. You feel safer with it. But it seems like the sort of thing he’d do, leave it behind because he wants to set a good example for you, or because he doesn’t _believe_ in having it around muggles, or some bullshit like that.

‘The side door’s unlocked,’ you tell him.

He looks at you funny for a moment. You tinge red. ‘Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go lock it.’ 

You don’t follow him, instead waiting by the car til he comes and opens it for you. He takes a long time; you look back over your shoulder and see that he’s vanished. You trot over, frowning, and he emerges from around the back of the house. ‘Thought I’d check the back door, too. That one was still locked from last time.’

You nod. Good to know there’s three exits from the house that don’t involve defenestration. But what was he doing in your absence that involved unlocking the side door? It doesn’t matter. You roll down your window and rest your head on the sill, the wind tousling your hair while Uncle Luke drives you to town.

The grocery store is smaller than the ones you're used to. ‘If there's anything you want, feel free to grab it,’ he says while pushing his cart towards the produce. The wording strikes you: you don't have to go through the daunting task of asking for it? You can just put it in the cart?

To test this, you grab a carton of strawberries and place them on the seat. He doesn't look round from selecting a bag of grapes, and doesn't react when he nestles them next to the berries. There's no way he didn't see them.

Huh.

Well, he’s not likely to object to _strawberries_. You hastily look around for something unhealthy. There’s an end cap with a shelf full of what appears to be chocolate dip, with a large chocolate-covered strawberry splashed across the front. Perfect. You shuffle shiftily over to grab a tub, and leave it on top of the strawberries, where he won’t miss it. He lovingly lays a bag of scallions beside it and keeps moving.

You frown and follow him at a slight distance. He doesn't react to a bag of garlic croutons you toss onto the seat. Or a bag of some unidentifiable vegetable. Or a box of gummy orange slices. You're grabbing anything that remotely catches your eye by the time you reach the shelves: peach marmalade, tinned oysters, a box of fucking quinoa. Why isn't he reacting? Why is he just letting you get this useless crap? He’s got to have a limit, he's got to have a fucking limit somewhere, _why isn't he reacting?_ You don't even want this shit. Who the fuck eats quinoa? Who the fuck lets their nephew make them buy quinoa? How do you even pronounce quinoa? You dump an armful of boxes of Cocoa Puffs, five entire boxes of Cocoa Puffs, into the cart and he doesn't fucking care. Is he ignoring you, refusing to pay you attention as some kind of lesson, even after giving you permission to do this? Or does he just thoroughly, legitimately not care? Why doesn't he care? It's his money you're spending, even if he is fucking loaded. It's his time you're wasting, it's him you're embarrassing in public, he's the one who has to endure having you around, _why doesn't he care?_

By the time you make it to the checkout the cart is overflowing with a mountain of useless bullshit. You add a fistfull of candy bars to the conveyor belt for good measure. The cashier stares at you. You bare your teeth at her. Uncle Luke smiles apologetically. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. Is this it, then, that it’s just a big joke to him? Your face is still contorted in a snarl when he turns to you. ‘Kylo, can you help me bag?’

‘Fine,’ you say, momentarily tamed by the tingly feeling in your chest and shoulders. You go and wrestle a paper bag open and begin haphazardly sticking things inside. You shouldn’t let him using your name affect you like this. Who cares if some random adult who’s only paying attention to you out of familial obligation calls you by the right name? Not you, that’s for sure. The whole thing’s stupid, and he’s only doing it to get you to like him anyway. Well, it’s not going to work.

You heft up your filled bag to put it in the cart. As you do, a ripping noise sounds beneath your hands, and then you’ve got a split second to recognise the bag bouncing off the edge of the provided platform and make a failed grab for it before it crashes to the floor. You flinch as everyone in the vicinity looks your way. Something red is blossoming at the place where the bag hit the floor. Your hands are shaking. There is no way out of this; you’d rather be dead than here.

Uncle Luke is picking up the bag from the bottom. ‘Looks like you broke the spaghetti sauce,’ he says, taking a moment to assess the damage before setting it down on the platform. ‘That’s okay, we can- Kylo, are you okay?’

You snarl weakly. The cashier is staring. ‘C’mon,’ Uncle Luke says with a little gesture, and keeps looking back to make sure you follow him toward the men’s bathroom. You’re vaguely aware of him calling an apology to the cashier as you go. It smells intensely like cleanser that’s meant to smell like oranges in here; like orange soda and disinfectant. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks again. You bristle, lacking any sort of answer. Your hands are still shaking. His hands have a smear of spaghetti sauce on them.

‘Do you want to stay in here while I finish bagging?’ he tries, and that, that’s good, yes, you don’t have to go back out there, you don’t have to deal with the bloody mess you made-- ‘Yes.’

‘Alright. I’ll come and get you.’

You don’t respond. He nods as if to give himself some conversational closure, and stops to get a wad of paper towels before leaving. You lock yourself in the handicap stall and lean against the door. It’s just a fucking jar of spaghetti sauce, you tell yourself. Not even your fucking fault. And your uncle is playing damage control, so it’s not even your problem to deal with anymore. _Pathetic, Ren._

Get out of my head, you tell the memory of Snoke. _Or what,_ it asks, in a voice that sounds an awful lot like your own internal monologue’s.

It feels like a very long time before you hear the door open and Uncle Luke calling your name (your name). You hastily wipe your eyes and go to meet him. You don’t look at his face, painfully aware of how pathetic you look, and not wanting to see pity. You keep your chin tucked close to your chest on the way back to the car, and rest it on your folded arms to stare out the open window for the ride home.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asks after a short stint of silence.

‘No.’ He talks like he cares, he acts like he doesn’t care, and you don’t know what the fuck is happening.

‘Do you know what you’d like for dinner?’

‘I don’t fucking care.’

He doesn’t react to your swearing, at least not audibly, and you still won’t look at him.

Back at the cabin you shut yourself in your bedroom. The only object that isn’t a piece of furniture or stowed away in your trunk is a little glass vase with a couple of plastic daffodils in it. You seize it and hurl it against the opposite wall. It shatters, satisfyingly loud. Not yet sated, you grab the handles of the top drawers in your dresser, one in each hand, and yank, intending to rip them out-- but instead have to skitter out of the way as the whole dresser falls towards you with a crash. You climb on top of it after, a felled conquest, and sit leaning against the wall, waiting for the telltale sounds of Uncle Luke coming to investigate: your name, or feet on the stairs, or feet in the hallway. You haven’t had a chance to learn this house’s particular creaks and moans yet, but you’re sure you will, soon enough. You’ll learn how to tell when he’s coming for you.

He doesn’t, right now. You suppose your parents will have told him all about your various habits. He must’ve been waiting for this.

You scream, just to see if he’ll come. Either way, you’re not really sure what conclusions to draw. He comes: he’s overly concerned with what might be going on with you, with keeping you happy, so you-- what? Won’t hurt anyone, anything? Too fucking late, at least for the latter. So he can feel like he’s keeping track of you, maybe? He’s such a fucking goody two-shoes, that’ll be it. Charity. Okay, he doesn’t come: he doesn’t actually care if you get hurt. Or he knows what a pathetically dramatic little crybaby you are, and that you aren’t worth paying any mind. Or both: with all your crying wolf, you deserve to get eaten. See, not that hard. You can figure him out. He can’t hide from you any more than you can hide from him.

He comes, though not so fast as to be hurrying. The way your door opens has him looking around the part of it you’re not in first. His brow is furrowed in concern. You look away as soon as he spots you. ‘Hey.’

You’re glad he didn’t ask if you’re alright. It’d be a stupid fucking question given the circumstances. ‘Hey.’

‘Are you hurt?’

There you go, there’s your answer. He’s obligated to not let you kill yourself. ‘No.’

‘Do you need anything?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want anything?’

The rephrasing shakes you for a moment, but only a moment. ‘A new fucking life.’

‘Sorry, I put it on the list, but they were fresh out at the store.’

You actually laugh, if only a little.

‘I was gonna make seafood risotto for dinner, are you okay with that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have you ever made risotto before?’

‘No.’ You frown, caught off guard by him again. Does he expect you to help? He let you abscond from any grocery stashing duties, is this payback?

‘Would you want to learn?’

Want. It could be a coincidence; it could be playing nice. Do you want to fight him tonight? You hesitate, wanting to avoid giving in to requests on principle, especially when they’re phrased like this, like they’re something for your own sake, but drained from the incident at the grocery store. You don’t want to fight him. You want to fight some more glass vases, or yourself, maybe, and you want him to acquiesce to your understanding.

You’re silent for long enough. ‘You don’t have to,’ he says, and you frown further. Doesn’t he know that means that you won’t? ‘You’ve got some time to make up your mind, I still have to finish putting the groceries away. Come down if you feel like it.’

You don’t respond. After a moment you hear him shutting the door behind himself.

You sigh and shudder, unsure of how to proceed. You don’t know why he wants you to learn how to make risotto. He probably wants you to do some of the cooking around here, that’ll be it. He senses that you don’t know how to make much outside of spaghetti and scrambled eggs, and so is trying to expand your repertoire so you’ll be better prepared to help. That makes sense. So if you don’t give in, he won’t ask you to help as much, because there’s only so much spaghetti a person can eat before going insane. You should just stay put.

But the thing is-- he gave you permission to stay put. Why, if he wants you to learn? You’re so lazy and useless, of course you’d take him up on it, so why even give you that option? To give you the illusion of choice? He’s shooting himself in the foot, then, because it’s not a fucking illusion. You can stay put and he can’t make you move. He’s not even trying to make you move. Why isn’t he trying to make you move? Does he not fucking care?

It hits you: he doesn’t. He didn’t care what groceries you bought. He only came when you screamed because you’re under his responsibility. He doesn’t care what you do in the woods, or how far you venture as long as you don’t disappear and get him in trouble. He doesn’t care what magic you do as long as you don’t violate the international statute of secrecy, and get him in trouble. He only offered to show you how to cook to make himself feel like he’s making an effort to spend time with you; like he’s being a good uncle. That explains it, all of it this time. He gave you the cop-out knowing you’d take it and he’d be off the hook.

Fat chance.

By the time you realise you don’t actually have a problem with him avoiding spending time with you you’re halfway down the stairs. You almost turn right back around, but it’s too late, you’re committed. This’ll aid your quest to map out the limits of his patience, forcing him to be around you. If he doesn’t like it he shouldn’t have agreed to take you in for the summer. It’s his own fault, that you’re making him suffer now.

‘Hey, Kylo,’ he says with false cheer as you approach the kitchen. You bite down on the little flutter in your chest at hearing your name. Kill it; kill it hard. It’ll only bring you trouble. He’s currently in the process of chopping something: onions, it turns out, as you draw near. Or like, weird mini onions. ‘Are you here to help?’

You bristle. ‘Yes,’ you say, regretting your choice more and more by the second.

‘Alright. Have you ever sauteed something before?’

‘No.’

‘It’s pretty simple. Grab that skillet and put it on the stove.’ He indicates the pot rack with a jab of his chin.

You’re about eighty percent sure what a skillet is. He doesn’t react specifically to your best guess, though, so you must not’ve got it wrong. He comes over with his cutting board full of silly onions and a bottle of olive oil. ‘Here, pour some of this in. That’s enough. Turn the heat on.’ He dumps the onions into the pan, unsticking a stubborn few with his knife. They sizzle. He quickly swaps the knife out for a spatula. ‘The idea is to push them around so they cook evenly and don’t scorch,’ he tells you, demonstrating. ‘Here.’ He presses the spatula on you. ‘What happened to your hand?’

In all the recent excitement you’d forgotten all about the blood rock. ‘Nothing,’ you say quickly, clutching the spatula tighter, trying to hide what he’s already seen. You push the tiny onion slices around the pan. ‘I cut it while I was walking,’ you amend. ‘And then I healed it.’

‘I’m impressed; that’s pretty advanced magic.’

You frown, remembering the fire that threatened to eat up your fingertips, the failed first attempt, Hux neatly knitting your split knuckles back together. There was heat and cold then, too, but it was vaguely unpleasant, not painful. Your ears warm. ‘It didn’t work. Not all the way.’

‘Let me see?’

‘The onions will scorch.’

You don’t look away from them, hissing in the pan; don’t look at his reaction. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not hurt,’ he says, and leaves your side to grab a saucepan.

Risotto, it turns out, involves a lot of pushing things around in a pan. It’s not hard, judging when the rice has absorbed all the liquid available to it and instructing Uncle Luke to add more, and you appreciate the simplicity and repetitiveness of the task. It’s nice. You’re calm. 

You eat dinner in silence, hunched over your plate. You don’t look up any further than to see his wooden hand and his emptying plate. He compliments your cooking. You make a noncommittal sound. 

After dinner he asks you to help clean up, and you agree without complaint, glad for a request you can understand without thinking about it, for a small return to normality. The realisation that he doesn’t actually care about you is somewhat relieving. You can do what you want as long as you do what he asks, and don’t get in his way. His part is just for show - probably because your mother asked him to - so you don’t have to bother putting effort into yours.

So this summer could actually be okay. You get to wander around the forest and do magic and not have any adults breathing down your neck, which is a better outlook than you’ve had in a long time. You’ve just got to play it safe, now that you know what Uncle Luke’s about. Scrap the plan of finding the ends of his nerves. As long as you don’t reach that point, it won’t matter. He’ll leave you alone unless you give him a reason not to, and you’ll have a good time. You still wish you could get in contact with your friends, but-- it’ll. Be okay. You’ve gone far longer without friends at all, you can stand whatever isolation geography and your parents throw at you. 

You take a deep breath. Time to play nice. ‘Can I go back upstairs?’ you ask Uncle Luke once you’re finished loading the dishwasher.

‘Yeah, go ahead.’

‘Thanks,’ you say, a lump forming in your throat, and try not to walk too fast.

You don’t know what to do once you get there, so you just close your bedroom door and sink to be sitting against it, arms on your knees, head on your arms. Why is that so hard, why are you in so much pain all of a sudden? The summer’s shaping up. You should be happy. You should be-- doing whatever it is you want to do right now. What do you want to do right now?

Anything but this, you answer yourself. You wish you were back at Hogwarts, sprawled on the grass under your favourite tree by the lake, Hux reading or attempting to, Phasma knitting and talking to you while you lie back and stare at the clouds-- or curled up in a corner of the Hufflepuff common room, not your house but theirs so close enough, trying to get some homework done, you and Hux manning questions while Phasma reads aloud-- or flying, wind under your hair and sleeves, deliciously bitter against your skin, the whole world yours to see and claim-- or sequestered in some bathroom, the door locked via magic, the three of you helping each other mop up your faces before class because some jerk didn’t like Phasma’s attitude or Hux’s tongue or the fact that you’re wearing a skirt--

You decide what you want to do is throw things, so you get up and plod over to your trunk. Your whole self hurts right now, a strange feeling dwelling in the flesh of your shoulders and arms and throat and heart, all the emotions that won’t fit inside you somehow manifesting as physical pain. It’s something you’re terribly familiar with, and have grown to hate, even fear. You drop to the ground as soon as you get there, legs splayed however they choose, and pull your backpack unceremoniously off the top, pull your trunk key out from where it’s tucked under your shirt, on a leather strap round your neck-- extra security for the things you couldn’t hold with you on the plane. The inside of the trunk has been magically expanded, but only to an extent, and it’s still a tight fit for everything you own. You don’t have a lot of truly personal effects; almost everything is clothes or school things. Almost everything that isn’t is in your backpack, safe from you at the moment. Absolutely everything is piled in willy-nilly, however you could get it to fit without thinking about it.

You seize a book off the top and fling it as hard as you can at the opposite wall. It makes a satisfying thud and falls on top of some of the glass shards from the vase you broke earlier. You ball up a hoodie and throw that too. The zipper clinks against the floor as it lands in the corner. You grab a tie, a stupid fucking _Gryffindor_ tie - you wouldn’t care if it wasn’t the same house as your fucking cousin, as your fucking mother, _as every fucking hero you can think of_ \- which only makes it halfway across the room, fluttering pathetically to the ground. You yell wordlessly at it and throw another book.

You proceed in this manner to empty almost half the contents of your trunk into the far corner of your room and the diagonal leading to such before losing momentum. You sit there, breathing hard. You don’t feel better, but you do feel different, which is good. You lie back on the floor. From here you can see the end of your trunk, where you scratched off the flaky gold _BOS_ and hand-painted a shaky _KR_. That’s another reason you hate what used to be your name: no matter which way you split your initials, you were either body odor or bullshit.

No, not your initials. A different person's; a past you who wasn’t like this. There’s still a couple chips of the original gold paint firmly clinging to the end of the trunk. Your arms feel too weak to move. 

There’s a knock on the door, and for a brief moment terror grabs you. ‘What?’ you demand, then remember you were going to try to be polite. Well. Uncle Luke hasn’t objected to you being rude thus far. There might not be any point to bothering.

‘I just wanted to see how you’re doing.’

You feel like you’re going to cry. You don’t understand, and you feel like you’re going to cry. You don’t know how you’re doing. He doesn’t get to know if you don’t. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, and you don’t know what you’re feeling or thinking or doing, and all your understanding of the situation just went up in smoke. Snatched out from your very hands.

‘Fuck off!’ you scream, and keep screaming. You grab a random black garment from the floor beside you and bury your face in it, clawing at yourself through it. You want to be dead. You want to be dead.

You don’t know how long it is before you move. It might have been a very long time. It might have been no time at all, or something in the middle. The black fabric in your hands is damp. You are lost at sea. You wish Hux was here. You wish Hux had a phone. You wish Hux had been born to different parents. You wish you had been born to different parents, or, while you’re at it, that you had never been born at all. You wish you got internet out here. You wish Phasma was here, and that she owned a phone. You wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole. You wish you could yank your teeth out with your bare hands. You wish the whole world would just end already; that way your friends wouldn’t have to miss you. 

You roll onto your side, shaking. You bury your face in the fabric again but it’s different, now that there’s been air between the dampness and your face, and you don’t stick with it for long. You straighten out the garment to look at it instead. It’s a Linkin Park t-shirt. You toss it aside.

You wish Hux had a phone.

You roll back over, and stare at the ceiling, and swim in yourself.

Eventually there’s another knock on the door, gentler this time. You still start. ‘Kylo?’ Uncle Luke asks. Rather than hard to make out through the door, the noise is almost painfully clear, as if your head has been peeled, so the noise hits your brain directly without so much padding as ears in between. You don’t respond. You don’t think you can respond. You swore at him and threw a fucking tantrum, and he’s still using your name. ‘Kylo, can I come in?’

You make a long whining noise. After a few moments, the door opens. You shut your eyes tight rather than watch him pity you.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, tone horrifyingly gentle, and you don’t know, you don’t fucking know, and you hate yourself for it.

‘What isn’t?’ you spit, amazed to find you can talk. When you open your eyes, you can’t see him, only the ceiling and the objects in your peripheral. Somehow, this is not a comfort.

‘The hot cocoa you got seemed pretty alright last time I checked.’

You feel like you’re going to start crying again. Why is he trying, why is he bothering, why does he care he doesn’t _care_ \--

‘Do you want some?’

You want some. You don’t want to want some. You put your arms over your face and try to remind yourself that he’s only doing this to get something out of you. This, just like your name, just like the fucking groceries probably, is the candy he’s offering, you just can’t see where he’s parked his van. You’re back to square one. He wants something; you’re not sure what it is. You clutch your hair and whimper. He’s quiet for a bit. You wish something would happen that didn’t involve this.

‘Hey, I- why don’t you come downstairs, okay?’

This isn’t what you had in mind, but it’s easier to comply than not, and you’re weak. (You’re so weak. _Pathetic, Ren._ ) You get unsteadily to your feet. You’re a few inches taller than him. You knew this before, but appreciate it now for how odd it feels. You look like you could easily overpower him, but know you couldn’t. 

You allow yourself to be led downstairs and sat at the counter island. Uncle Luke busies himself with finding mugs; pouring milk. You know what he’s doing. You don’t know why he’s doing it. It seems, distantly, like the thing he’s supposed to be doing. Like you’re part of your picture-perfect brochure with its picture-perfect cabin and picture-perfect lake. Here’s your picture-perfect uncle, being the best person he can be. Only you don’t know whose standard he’s going by, because you’re not even the picture-perfect delinquent disappointment. You’re not even sane.

The scene feels at once too real and not real at all. The sky outside is on fire; pink and orange and purple. The marble-pattern countertop is cool under your forearms. The beeps the microwave makes when being programmed are loud and shrill. You don’t remember putting hot chocolate in the cart. The shopping trip of this afternoon seems a lifetime away; the experiences of someone who you used to be and who you are not now.

But this is always how it goes, with you. You should have accepted that by now. But as miserable as you are, you aren’t ready to stop existing, aren’t ready to be replaced by somebody else. Somebody with a new, better name, who doesn’t fall prey to old men with young mafias, and doesn’t spend hours crying on his bedroom floor, and knows what to say to his uncle. You’re an outdated model. You’re crying again. 

You watch as Uncle Luke goes and grabs a box of tissues from the side table in the living room and puts them down next to you on the counter. You take one, mind swimming with the same, tired old questions. Why is he taking care of you? What does he want from you when you’re better? Why should _familial obligation_ factor into anything, anything at all? The pile of tissues in front of you accumulates. The microwave beeps, and you jump.

‘Here,’ Uncle Luke says an indeterminate amount of time thereafter, pushing snot mountain aside with his arm and setting a large mug of hot chocolate down in front of you. It’s got whipped cream and little chocolate curls on top. You sniffle. ‘You should drink some water too, you’ve gotta be pretty dehydrated after all that.’ You hear the clink of him getting a cup from the cupboards; the rush of tap water. You don’t take your eyes off the hot chocolate. The whipped cream is spiralled in a perfect cone. The mug is blue ceramic and slightly lopsided. Your eyes sting. You still don’t move when Uncle Luke places a glass of water down in front of you. You can’t wrap your head around what you’re supposed to do here.

Drink the water, you command yourself. Drink the water and stop being such a little pissbaby.

You knock back a long sip of water and almost choke on it. Uncle Luke looks at you with some concern while you splutter, and you glare at him. He’s nursing his own cup of hot chocolate, you realise. You drown your attention in the water glass; manage to drink normally; manage to drain it. Slam it down on the counter with such force that you hear a crack. Wince.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Uncle Luke says, getting out his wand. You hunch over and hide your face in your hot chocolate while he repairs the damage. It’s mediocre hot chocolate. You must not’ve grabbed the good stuff. But the warmth feels nice in your chest. Your face feels overly clear from crying, and slightly damp, everything too bright and too clear. Your hair is in danger of trailing in your cup. You have whipped cream on your nose.

‘Do you want to talk about anything?’

You’re silent. It’s a stupid fucking question, why does he keep asking it. What are you supposed to say, yes, here’s all my intimate thoughts and feelings and secrets, have fun? You don’t think so.

‘Do you want to watch a movie tonight?’

You don't, not if he means with him, which you know he does. But you don't want to go back to being shut in your room with nothing to do besides wreck the place and cry over thin air. You don't want to have to make this decision; you want to die on the spot and avoid arriving at either future. 

You sit there for a few moments, breathing heavy, just in case it'll happen. It doesn't, because the universe hates you. You know Uncle Luke is looking at you, waiting for an answer, or curiously probing the surface of how fucked up you are.

‘No,’ you say, to stop him watching. You can find something to do; you have games installed on your laptop that don't require the internet to run. Or you could draw, or something. (You don't feel like drawing.) If nothing else, you can listen to music and stare at the ceiling. You can find things to do with yourself, you're not _that_ pathetic. Your voice is raw and loud.

‘Alright,’ he says. You down a shaky swig of hot chocolate.

‘I. I'm going to go. Back upstairs.’

‘Alright.’ He sounds far too concerned for your liking, but he doesn't stop you from pushing your stool back from the counter and trudging back upstairs. You take the hot chocolate with you.

Not wanting to repeat the experience you had after dinner, you resist the urge to collapse on the floor and instead head straight for your backpack. You stick your wand back in your pocket, glad for the comforting feel of it held loosely to your leg, and dig out your laptop. You open it cross-legged on the bare mattress despite the existence of a desk, the hot chocolate left on your bedside table. It takes less time than usual, it feels like, to boot up. The internet confirms its unavailability when you click on the little icon. 

You try to play various games you have saved to your desktop, but nothing holds your attention for more than a few seconds. You play several games of minesweeper, and lose all of them. You try opening your browser, just in case the list of signals is lying, and play Chrome's dinosaur sidescroller for a little while, but quickly lose interest in that too. You consider hurling your laptop at the opposite wall, but refrain on the basis that you need to see if Phasma’s emailed you yet, and you dislike typing on your phone. You wish Phasma was here. She'd tell you the same thing, just for different reasons, with a derisive snort at the thought of your senseless violence, flipping a stray bit of fluffy blond hair out of her face with a casual hand movement that somehow itself tells you off. You still wouldn’t do it. You should see if Uncle Luke will take you to a coffee shop in town tomorrow to borrow their internet.

Later, though. You'll ask. Later.

Instead, you give up your laptop as a bad job and go get your mp3 player. Time for plan B. Plan C? It doesn't matter. You collapse backwards on your bed once you have your giant headphones secured around your ears. You have to cycle through autoplay’s suggestions about twelve times before finding something you actually want to listen to, but after that just let it run and study the constellation of pimples in the ceiling plaster, the patterns formed by the occasional cracks. This song reminds you of Hux.

You wish Hux was here. He’s unfamiliar with the vast majority of music - his parents don’t believe in such things - and you can’t use your mp3 player at Hogwarts due to the magical interference. You don’t have a headphone splitter, but you’d put up with your emergency earbuds if it meant you could listen to music together. Or, no, you’d just lie side by side with your headphones between you, each pressing one side of the headset to the side of your head, and he’d say this is silly, why don’t you just get your earbuds out, but go along with it anyway-- only, no, he doesn’t know what earbuds are, probably, so he’d just go along with it, but it wouldn’t mean as much. Only it would, because he’d know nothing about the situation and so would be trusting you to guide him, accepting what you told him as truth for lack of any other frame of reference. He’d scoff at or question certain things you told him, some of them true, some of them not, but he’d trust you. He’d let you take a percentage of the ever-expanding scope of his perspective for your very own. 

You’d both fit, here, on the twin mattress, because you may sprawl by nature but he’s stiff-shouldered and skinny, and it’s okay if your spaces overlap a little. His right hand, the one he isn’t using to pin the earphone to his head, would be resting gently on his stomach, or maybe his chest. The back of his hair would muss against the mattress, lit on fire by the last of the sunset filtering through the window blinds. He’d recognise some configuration of stars from your astronomy textbook in the spots on the ceiling, mind constantly churning out connected dots you have to fight for-- but not mention it, not wanting to interrupt the song, the calm, the intimacy. You wouldn’t want to, either; wouldn’t be erratically flicking your hand in time to occasional snatches of music that catch your fancy like you are now. 

He wouldn’t like all of it, of course; wouldn’t like the heavy metal song currently playing, for instance. He’d call quite a few of your favourites _melodramatic_ should he pay attention to the lyrics, which of course he would-- but with the sort of lightly exasperated tone he often uses on petty insults or when talking to you, which you suspect is a sort of fondness that has not quite accepted itself and so pretends to be annoyed. But you’d only play him things he’d like, or would have a good chance of liking. He’s trusting you, after all, acquiescing without complaint to your preference of something silly over the pain of having a tiny bit of plastic stuck in your ear.

You wish Hux was here. 

You stay where you are for a very long time, letting the room grow dark around you. Eventually the door swings open, and you start. Uncle Luke comes in with an arm full of bedding, presumably freshly laundered. He’s talking. You can’t make out what he’s saying over the music. You decide you like him better this way, and go back to staring at the ceiling. The wedge of light cast from the hallway disappears after a short time, and you turn your head to see if he’s gone. He is. The pile of bedding is on top of your fallen dresser. You should probably put it on your bed at some point. Whatever.

But this event must have pierced the film of calm inaction that settled over you, somehow, because you’re urged to get up, stretch, and turn on the light not long after. The clock on your mp3 player claims it’s nearly six in the morning. You frown; that can’t be right. Oh. You forgot to adjust it to match the new time zone. You check the time on your phone, which you did change back at the airport. It’s eight minutes to ten. That’s as good a time as any to go to bed. You often stay up much later, especially during the summer, but that’s when you have stuff to _do_ , and right now, you’d much rather be blacked out than not. You sink to your knees to root through your trunk for a pair of pajama pants. Your favourites might be spewed across the floor of your room, but whatever. You’ll take what you can get. 

Your hand meets with one of the few items you bothered to fold, stashed in the bottom of your trunk. You look behind you before dredging it out-- Uncle Luke isn’t there, of course he isn’t there, you knew he isn’t there. You’re still wary of being watched as you shake the black pleated skirt, once Phasma’s, out of its neatly folded bundle and into a recognisable shape. It’s your favourite skirt, of the few you own. And you’ve had such a rough day, surely it wouldn’t hurt to--

You step out of your jeans, aware of the outline of your wand left in the pile on the floor, and into the skirt. It’s long enough to meet school standards, but only just. Not meant for someone your height. Not meant for someone Phasma’s height, for that matter. You smooth it out in the full-length mirror next to your dresser. The once-sharp lines of the pleats are faded from repeated wear, but it suits you better this way. You have full view of your somewhat knobby knees, of your fairly hairy legs, of far more ashy-pale skin than usual, but you still look somehow _better_ in a way that makes you-- not quite smile, but try to tousle your hair into a more attractive configuration. Fuck it; smile. Something soft and chiming is coming from your headphones, tinny and quiet from distance now that you’re wearing them around your neck.

You hear something in the hallway and quickly shuck the skirt off your bony hips. This isn’t something you want Uncle Luke seeing, not least because you’re sure he reports to your parents. This isn’t a defiance; it’s a secret. Something you need to keep safe. You may parade it around Hogwarts like you’re the master of your own destiny, but you don’t want your family to ruin this for you. Don’t want to find out how they’ll react. You crack the door open and peek through it, momentarily forgetting your trouserless state, but Uncle Luke isn't there anyway. You must've imagined it. 

You bury the skirt back at the bottom of your trunk and resume your hunt for pajama pants. The black and grey striped pair you unearth aren’t your favourites, but they’ll do. You consider putting the pink and blue floral sheets provided to you on the bed, but decide you can’t be bothered. You can’t bring yourself to go through the process of brushing your teeth, either. But you don’t feel right leaving your wand in the unceremonious heap of trouser on the floor, so you put it on your bedside table instead, and have a sip of lukewarm chocolate. Fuck, _luke_ warm. You hate yourself.

You curl up on the bare mattress with the duvet Uncle Luke left for you and the old pillow you’ve carted to Hogwarts and back five times. It’s hard for you to sleep with your headphones on due to not being able to lie on your side, but you’re not willing to be alone with your thoughts right now. Even with the company, sleep is merciless, and slow to arrive.

Late that night you find Hux dancing with himself in your bedroom, or perhaps a desert, to tinny, chiming music coming from the very air. He is artful and spontaneous in a way you never could’ve imagined, least of all from him. But the grace doesn’t surprise you: you always think of Hux as terribly graceful, even when he takes out his lack of sleep on unsuspecting bystanders or vomits his way through pre-exam jitters. Now you have proof.

The room seems strangely empty despite having him in it. ‘Where’d all my things go?’ you ask, not quite accusing. He can have them, if he wants them.

‘I tidied up,’ he tells you, still dancing. ‘I don’t know how you expect anything to get done around here, Kylo.’

‘But there’s sand everywhere,’ you protest. It’s not fair. He did a terrible job. Something more pressing occurs to you: ‘I didn’t know you could dance.’

‘Really?’ he asks. ‘You taught me.’

And then there’s this bit where you’re running around a haunted house trying to collect keys for Professor Mcgonagall as portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, so all in all, nothing too memorable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's selfie with the blood rock is by [invernom,](http://invernom.tumblr.com/) Kylo in his favourite skirt is by me. Kylo at the grocery store was a swap, they did the sketch + colours, I did the lineart + shading.
> 
> About sorting choices:
> 
> Kylo is a Gryffindor because he's SO reliant on his gut instinct, he's super impulsive and can't not follow his heart. 
> 
> Phasma and Hux are both Hufflepuffs because they're strongly committed to a community ideal and are unflinchingly hard workers.
> 
> Leia was in Gryffindor because of strong morals and impulsive snarkiness. Han is a muggle; Luke was wizard homeschooled.
> 
> Additionally, though other than occasional mention of Rey they probably won't show up in this fic:
> 
> Rey and Poe are Gryffindors (tm) because of their strong morals and occasionally impulsive bravery. 
> 
> Finn is a Slytherin because of his strong loyalty to individuals and his tendency to go with the flow + think on his feet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have gone my entire life believing "sklonk" was a real word and i'm not about to stop

You wake late the next morning, and blink blearily for a few moments against the sunlight peeking through the blinds. You're somewhat, distantly, surprised to find yourself at a clear-headed peace, even when you come to cognitive terms with where you are; with the bare mattress and the downed dresser and the countless items spewed across the floor. The events, the pain, of yesterday seem hazy and distant, behind a veil. Not important. Your headphones are warm and silent against your head; your mp3 player must've run itself dead overnight. You vaguely remember not plugging it in.

You get up to do just that after a few moments, wrestling briefly with the oversized duvet. You'll often spend ages, hours even, lingering in bed, but today you don't feel like it. You stretch your gangly body towards the ceiling, shirt rucking up to expose your underbelly to the open air, before letting out a puff of a sigh and setting about the business of finding an outlet. There's one under your bedside table, but the holes are the wrong shape and configuration. American outlets look like little faces, aghast at whatever they're seeing. You laugh a little; they're seeing you.

After returning to your backpack for one of the plug adapters your parents supplied to you, you head to the shower. You haven't been in the upstairs bathroom yet; you've been using the downstairs one. It has the same white and purple tile, though, the same walls patterned with large tree branches that look like cracks. There's an empty counter next to the sink, a large mirror above it, and no towels. You vaguely remember Uncle Luke mentioning that this bathroom would be yours. It makes sense; there's only two of you in the house, after all. The only sign that it might be someone else's is a light blue toothbrush in a little stripey cup by the sink. Your cousin's, most likely.

You firmly ignore it and go look for towels.

When you emerge on the landing - hair dark and damp, dressed in a t-shirt with a skull design and your favourite jeans - Uncle Luke is sitting in the living room, reading. ‘Hey Kylo,’ he says, looking up as you descend the stairs, and you're glad the most you feel is a small expansion, or perhaps contraction, in your chest. ‘Did you sleep alright?’

‘Yes,’ you say, without thinking about it. It doesn't matter whether you did or not, it's just a call and reply. You don't want to echo it, don't want to give in to standards of polite conversation. You don't care how well he slept.

‘Do you want some breakfast?’

You default to independence. ‘I can have Cocoa Puffs.’ 

‘Sure, if you want.’

You sklonk over to the kitchen and begin to look around for a bowl. You decided, at some point or another, that you have to eat everything you made Uncle Luke buy. You don't want him to know that he _made_ you do this, that you don't want half the things you got. Don't want him to know how much he got to you. At least you like Cocoa Puffs. Sort of. ‘Dishes are around the corner,’ he directs you, and you resentfully go look there instead.

There's chocolate milk in the fridge. You probably picked it out.

You take your double chocolate monstrosity over to the sofa, daring him to comment. He's gone back to reading. You shovel the cereal into your mouth noisily, hunched over your bowl, feet on the coffee table. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t react. You didn’t really expect him to, judging from yesterday, but you still have fun eating like your breakfast has personally wronged you. He also has his feet on the coffee table.

‘Is there anything you want to do today?’ he asks. Adults are supposed to ask that kind of thing, in your experience. That seems the simplest explanation for all his behaviour; it’s what he’s _supposed_ to do. You can live with that, you think.

‘N-- Yes,’ you say, remembering your plans to reach Phasma. Regardless of his intent, you should take advantage of not having to ask first. No, no, don’t _think_ like that, don’t let your guard down. You’re taking advantage, end of story. ‘Can we-- Can you take me to a coffee shop in town?’

‘Sure. When do you want to go?’

You expected him to question it; to question your intent. This is better, you tell yourself, even if you had been prepared to answer, even if it sets off a firework of uncertainties in your mind. ‘Now. Once I get my laptop.’

‘Okay. Put your bowl in the dishwasher?’

You drain the milk left at the bottom and get up to do so. He says ‘thanks’ without looking over. You stick out your tongue just in case he does look over. He doesn’t. You stomp upstairs. 

‘Don’t forget to put your wand away!’ he calls after you. 

‘Wouldn’t dream of it!’ you yell back, and slam your bedroom door, breathing hard.

No, shit, fuck. It’ll be fine. You’re gonna go talk to Phasma, and-- but, fuck, Phasma probably won’t have tried to contact you yet, it’s too early, she’s nowhere near as desperate as you are-- but. No. You’ll still get to access the internet. If nothing else you can see if there’s any webcomic updates you’ve missed, listen to some music, play some mindless games. Drink a stupid froofy coffee drink. It’s not like you have anything better to do. You kick some floor debris out of your way. You miss the hazy peace you felt upon waking already.

You shove your electronics back in your backpack, slam your wand down on your bedside table, wrestle your feet into some shoes. Tie a hoodie round your waist. On second thought, go put your wand in the bedside table drawer instead. Scuff your way back downstairs.

Uncle Luke is pulling his dark glove on. You don't see his wand on any of the nearby surfaces. He's taking it with him, of course he's taking it with him. It's only you who's not allowed.

‘Ready to go?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mind where we go specifically?’ he asks while you head out.

‘As long as it has internet, no.’

‘Alright.’ You're not looking at him, but you can hear the amused smile in the edges of his voice. You scowl and get in the car.

He finds you this little, local place called the Second Moon, which you guess is a cool name. The walls and floor inside are dark, but it's well lit, mostly by windows, leading to a somewhat strange effect where you can't quite settle on whether it's light or dark inside. The little speakers perched in the varied corners of the room are playing something indie-folk and nondisruptive. There's an open display of snacks and sandwiches next to the counter. You grab one that looks good, a chicken and cranberry something, while Uncle Luke considers the drink menu. You eat like most people expect teenage boys your height to eat, for the most part; the chocolate hell cereal from earlier isn't enough.

‘Ready?’ the young woman behind the counter asks. She looks about as enthused as you feel. You glance over the blackboard menu while Uncle Luke orders some kind of-- tea? Sounds like tea. ‘Uh. Can I get a dark chocolate mocha with a shot of cherry flavouring? Large. And this.’ You put the sandwich down on the counter; you have to reach slightly awkwardly due to being in the transient space between Uncle Luke and the display cooler.

‘Do you want whipped cream?’ she asks. That's a question people still ask? ‘Yes.’

‘That'll be $12.50,’ she tells Uncle Luke, and you stop paying attention. ‘I’m going to go sit down,’ you murmur after a few moments of disinterestedly looking around. He's probably going to sit with you regardless, so might as well get him to bring you your drink.

‘Alright,’ he says, and you scoop up your sandwich and go.

The seating area is small and mismatched. There's a handful of patrons already here. You locate an empty table by an outlet and start unpacking. Unwrap the bundled sandwich and take a vicious bite while your laptop boots up. Remember you don't know the wi-fi password, and shuffle back up to the counter. Uncle Luke and the young woman look at you. Your ears turn pink and your eyes slide to a sign that reads _Wi-fi: SecondMoon / Password: SummerSolstice._ You shuffle back to your seat and type it in. They probably change it to be seasonal, you think, staring dully at the little processing icon. You wonder what they think you came up there for.

Uncle Luke comes and puts your coffee down beside you. ‘I'm gonna go sit in one of those armchairs, okay?’ he says.

You're mildly surprised, but glad you won’t be under direct surveillance. ‘Okay.’

He goes. You open your browser, and promptly burn your tongue taking a sip of coffee. You stuff your mouth with sandwich to cover it up, idly navigating to your email. Your chest suddenly expands a great deal, and you pause mid-bite: you have two new emails. One is from your mother, you’ll worry about that later-- and the other is from one Phasma Jones.

You’re back to movement in a flurry, tearing off your mouthful of sandwich and fumbling with the mouse in your haste. The email reads:

_Hi Kylo._

_I know I already bored you to death about it last summer, but it still feels really weird writing letters. That’s all this is, right? A letter over the computer. I guess I’m just not used to writing down whatever’s going through my head. It feels so pointless. But that’s the whole point of a letter, so I’ll just have to suck it up. Besides, I’m already doing it._

_It wasn’t hard at all to get to the library. You and Hux kept going on about it like it was going to be some great trial out of Greek mythology. All I had to do was ask my grandpa for directions and bike down here. It was pretty far, but they have maps of the buses and trains, so I’m going to figure out a better way to get here. I told the librarian my grandparents were luddites and asked if she could teach me how to use the computer. She’s been super helpful. She showed me how to get on websites and helped me get my email set up. I’m going to check out some of the other stuff she mentioned after this, but I thought because you’re the one who got me here I should write to you first. She’s watching me from across the room now, to see if I need any more help. Maybe I made her a little concerned. But I smiled and waved right now and she seemed happy. You’re a bad influence on me Kylo. I wouldn’t have thought this was anything worth mentioning before._

_I don’t know when you’ll get this. I hope you can get internet access soon. Believe it or not, I’m as bored as you and Hux are. But don’t worry, I’m not taking my freedom for granted. I’m not going to sit around moping like I know you’re going to. I’ve already gone on a couple long bike rides, and I’ve been gardening with Gran a lot. But morning jogs just aren’t the same without you._

_What’s Oregon like? How was the plane ride? Have you broken anything yet? Do you think your uncle’s okay? Are there any websites I should go to? Talk to me Kylo._

_\-- Phasma_

You read it twice, smiling like an idiot. On the third time round you check the timestamp; it’s from yesterday. And it’ll be-- around seven? Where she is, so she won’t be online again now, even if she was desperate enough to try to see you twice in as many days, which you know she isn’t. But she’ll be back, she’ll be back. You just need to establish a pattern of when so you don’t have to ask to be driven down here every day. You scan it a third time on your way to the reply button.

_ok first of all phasma u type like someones mum like. i know ur just typing how you write but like seriously stop being such a prep. this is faster anyway how long did that take u u dont even know how to use a keyboard_

_ill never understand how u can write godly levels of essays but cant write whats fuckin goin thu ur head for shit. yours must be the tidiest brain. no leaks. how do you think teach me ur ways only dont i dont want your brain u can keep it. im the opposite tho i guess so i have no room to talk._

_not gonna argue that im a bad influence tho_

_im getting this day after u sent it, its 11 in the morning. yesterday was kinda busy what with arriving and all._

_oregons ok, its not that different from england tbh. oh that stands for to be honest btw. btw stands for by the way. but like idk its not like its different different apart from everything being american. mostly its just different b/c its in a forest. but theres lots of forests in england too even if i wasnt in them so idk overall not really. were still on the same latitude and by a body of water tho so yeah doesnt fucking matter_

_the plane ride was pretty fun. i got some pictures out the window ill send them to u. also they didnt loose my luggage so thats good. it was a pretty long one, i slept through some of it and i was barley even jetlagged. and i knitted a little but i think i messed up so i wanted to ask you about it. its doing this wierd thing with too many loops ill send u a picture of that too. so instead i was drawing, i drew you but i dont think it really looks like u. i need photo refs of u n hux so i can draw both of u properly. i cant remember what ur nose looks like. u spend so much time around someone and u dont even look at their nose that much_

_ive broken a lot of shit i broke some spagetti sauce n a glass vase and i knocked over my dresser and threw a lot of stuff so probably some of it broke i wasnt really paying attention to that. i also broke a glass because i set it down too hard. be proud of me phaz. im strong. im shredded_

_oh also i broke a rock it was really metal. i didnt really break it actually i slashed it artistically. and then i smeared blood on it. it looked really cool i took some pictures of that too_

_i really dont know about my uncle. he keeps like. i dont know. pretending he cares about me. like he keeps offering me dumb shit and asking if i want to talk about my feelings. like how fucking dumb can u get. like ur just gonna drop in out of nowhere and care about this fuckhead just cause like 15 years ago you found out u had a secret twin sistser?? my family is dumb as shit phaz i wish i lived with ur grandparents hux can move in too. well rule this town. oh also i know we talked about it but if hux sends u any mail type it up and send it to me ok u gotta promise_

_oh one maybe good thing about my uncle tho is he really doesnt give a fuck about anything as far as i can tell. he let me buy 5 boxes of cocoa puffs and eat them with chocolate milk and he didnt even say anything. he didnt even look at me like he dissapproved. so thats nice i guess. hes still fucking weird tho i wish he would just leave me alone completely instead of tryna act like hes my friend or some fcuking bullshit like that. hes probs only doing it so he can feel good about himself anyway. im just here for charity wank. which i guess would be ok but liek by nature that means he can t just come forwards n say it he has to fuckin pretend, do the nice parent thing and oh look what a happy fuckin family were not!!!!!_

_sorry phaz but u asked_

_you should go on youtube, its all videos, you can find a lot of good music or just like cool or funny shit on there. here ill link you some stuff. make sure when u do this u go get some headphones from the librarian b/c itll make noise so if u dont have headphones plugged in itll cause a scene._

_heres the things tho, just click on them and itll take you there. actually right clock on them and then click open in new tab, cause then you can stil lhave your email open. always open in new tab phasma, always._

_<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAGZ7c8V9SM> (i think you would really like this song)_

_<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU8LWFeg-RY> (this is one of my favourite songs, i reccommend listening to more from this band)_

_<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCpOoAFfcEA> (this is just really funny theres a lot of videos like this)_

_<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPzNl6NKAG0> (cat videos are a very important part of internet culture. theres a lot of these too. this ones a classic)_

_<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm52JHtb2Fc> (this is really cool but it bothers me that they call the little kid cute. he could kick your ass. but its a really cool demonstration so)_

_and yeah u can also click on the videos on the side to watch tose otherwise you can type in the box to look for what u want. u should also go here these are cool. im just gonna send u a whole bunch to play aournd with. i can show u the world phaz_

_<http://www.newgrounds.com/> (theres like a bunch of shit here its cool)_

_<http://www.deviantart.com/> (this is an art hosting website, you can search whatever you want to look at and find art of it)_

_<http://xx--knight0fdarkness--xx.tumblr.com/> (this is my blog)_

_<http://www.asofterworld.com> (these are really cool)_

_<http://threejs.org/examples/> (this is just really good for fucking around with)_

_ill send u more later i just need to think of things_

_so have i talked enough yet_

_im kidding. dont stop writing phaz ill die of boredom. let me know what days ur gonna be at the library so i dont have to ask my uncle to drive down here every day so i can know when to write you back_

_you have to tell me stuff, too. its only fair. what are you gardening. has your grandma roped you into any baking or facny parties yet. has your grandpa been on any cool ice expiditions. where did you bike to. have u beat anyone up yet. what time do u wake up now theres no school. what have you been doing with urself. whats been cool._

_also can u write to hux and ask how hes doing. whats he reading. has he been able to get out of the house much. hows mission: actually fuckin sleep going. whats he been up to, whats cool with him. whats uncool. ill read six pages of him complaining, i dont care_

_thats all i have phaz ill probably email u some more links later_

_bye_

_\-- kylo_

You sign your name the same way she did and hit send. A moment later you realise you forgot to attach the promised pictures and get out your phone to access them and stick them in a follow-up email: your selfies with the blood rock, solo - no fuck you hate that word - pictures of the blood rock, the stringy mess of your latest attempt at knitting, golden-pink and white-blue skyscapes. You realise you should've taken a few pictures of the cabin, too, just to show her how ridiculous it is. You'll do that later.

You send that one too, and return your attention to your laptop. The email from your mother glows at you. The subject line reads _Checking In._ The first two words of the body are _Hi honey._ You delete the email.

After a brief interlude of staring into dead space, you return to your temporarily forgotten second breakfast and check your RSS feed. You follow enough webcomics and blogs to have a good handful of updates to read after a few days offline. It's enough to keep you busy, for like, at least fifteen minutes. Then you go and undelete the email from your mother, and quickly navigate to a different tab before you have to read it. 

You give in after about ten more minutes; after beginning to draft an additional list of links for Phasma, in a different email tab because you're a petty coward. It's short, and at first your eyes just skate over the words without reading. You navigate away again, drink a long sip of coffee. Your arm is shaking slightly; you're clutching the cup too tight. You click back on the first instance of email. Take the plunge.

_Hi honey,_

_Let me know when you get this, I want to make sure you landed safely. Your father and I may have intermittent internet access for a while, but I still want you to email one of us if there's anything you need. We'll get it as soon as we can._

_I love you._

You stare at the screen and suck on your tongue for a couple seconds, before quickly typing the reply of _yes im alive_ and hitting send before you can change your mind. You're not going to ask her for anything, ever: she sent you away, she gave up her chance. It'd be impractical, anyway, when you have Uncle Luke right here. You can't conceptualise anything that you would want from her, specifically, rather than any adult with money willing to spend it on you. Intermittent internet access-- she's probably taking your cousin on a trek across Africa or something. She wants you to email her if there's something you need-- what, like it benefits her? She loves you-- then why are you here? Not that you want to be home, but-- it was her idea. Or your father's, or Uncle Luke’s, or something. She still agreed to it. She still swapped you out for the likeable child in your family. She's only saying she loves you because that's what's expected of a mother. She doesn't love you. She tolerates you, because she has to.

You wish everyone would stop giving in to expectations.

You read the email again despite yourself. She didn't use one name while writing this, not even her own. Avoiding the sore subject. You crush your coffee cup in your shaking hand. It splits at the side, and the remaining, still-warm liquid spills onto the edge of the table and your right leg. There wasn't too much left, it's not that big of a mess, considering. You don't really care, but glance around to see if anyone else does. No-one's looking at you. Uncle Luke is doing something on a tablet. You still use the napkins he brought you with your coffee to mop up the table so your laptop doesn’t get wet. The rest can just. Stay there.

You’ve forgotten what you were doing, every instance of it in the slightest. There is a screen in front of you, but it does not hold anything appealing. You want to scream and run and hide and break things, but there is coffee all over your leg and you do not want people to look at you. You are paralysed. 

You sit and stare at nothing and suck on your tongue some more. There is not a thought you can pick from your head; you’re all white noise and sensory input. There is, perhaps, a screen in front of you. There is a tongue in your mouth. The right leg of your jeans is warm and wet; something smells strongly of coffee. There is a half-crushed cup on the table beside your laptop; you lift your hand to crush it properly, with all the grace of a soaked sandbag. You hate this; you hate this. The thought of your family isn’t allowed to do this to you.

After some time - you do not know how long - you do your best to navigate back to whatever you were finding on youtube to send to Phasma. Try to remember what else you were going to send her. You can’t. Instead you sit hunched over with your arms crossed in your lap. The stain on your leg is congealing out of wet and into sticky.

On the peripherals of your awareness, somebody sits down across from you at the tiny table, and this is what makes you look up. It’s Uncle Luke; of course it is. This does not prompt you to feel anything more than a dull ache and a dull resentment.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks, voice low enough to slip under the hum of the speakers and background chatter. That’s all he ever asks. Then again, all you ever are is _not._ You don’t do anything, don’t bother trying to think of the answer. It’s out of your reach. You can recognise that. ‘Kylo?’ Your eyes must be glazed over, you think. You must look concerning.

‘What?’ you say, because you don’t want him prying, but it costs you a great deal. You can’t bring yourself to focus on his face, but all he sounds is more concerned. Fuck.

‘You looked like you were upset, I just wanted to check in.’

 _Checking In._ Fuck. He’s one of them. You knew that, you knew that. This is just a reminder. He’s part of the conspiracy that led you even further worlds away from Hux and Phasma; one of the many, many people who only spends time with you because of some obligation. But, no, there he is _caring,_ or something, whatever the fuck-- no. No. Familial obligation; social expectations. That’s all this is. That’s all he is, at least where you’re concerned. You can't bear to get into what else he might be, not now. You're already leaking out of your own body, spilling just like the coffee.

_Foolish. Letting your guard down._

You're-- aware he might be waiting for some sort of reply. You have no idea what such a reply might look like. You quiver.

‘Is there anything you need?’ he asks.

A hundred replies spark at the front of your brain, and you are privy to none of them. You want to say something snarky; you can't. _I still want you to email one of us if there's anything you need._ New idea: all adults belong to a poorly coordinated hivemind. ‘No.’

You can feel the concern coming off of him in waves. You hunch back in on yourself.

(This is something about Hux and Phasma for which you were endlessly grateful last spring: they never fuss over you, with worry or anything else. Even respectively pale-faced and stoic at your bedside, their concern was _theirs,_ nothing you had to address or appease. You weren't scaring them; they were just plain scared. And yet, Phasma made a couple of deadpan jokes, and Hux rolled his eyes and scoffed, and things were _normal,_ and their worry was just a facet of that normality.

But Uncle Luke is a foreign object, an unknown quantity. Just because he's family, it doesn't automatically make him familiar. You can't accept help from strangers. You-- you can't. You saw how well that went.)

‘Well, let me know if there is.’

You don't do or say anything. He sighs, just outside of imperceptible. ‘You can leave me alone,’ you say, annoyed now, which is good, annoyance is better than nothing.

‘Okay,’ he says, and you look up at him again: there's no resignation to it, no thinly veiled exasperation or disappointment. He sounds casual as anything, which supports the theory that he really doesn't care and doesn't want to care for you at all, that it's all one big show, but--

But--

‘Let me know when you're ready to leave,’ he says, standing up and pushing his chair in. You continue to stare at him open-mouthed as he goes up to the counter and orders another tea. It's not that no-one's ever responded that way when you've posed such a request: quite often your parents, sick of attempting to reach you - their own damn fault for trying in the first place - have given up and left you to your own devices. But they've always done it with the air of a passive-aggressive punishment, like this wasn't what you wanted in the first place, or with some sort of great sadness, like you're breaking their hearts by locking them out like this. Uncle Luke just-- acquiesced. Without any trace of complaint. 

You look back at your computer screen, not wanting to stare at him for too long. The latest song you were sending to Phasma is open on the screen, the video having played through while you zoned out. You switch to the list you were drafting for her and add a paragraph at the bottom.

_also i just told my uncle to leave me alone and he just was like ‘okay’ and left. like wtf why?? not that im complaining but. i cant figure him out. it wasnt even passive aggressive or anything. he just left. because i asked him to. who does that._

But-- maybe if he really does leave you alone, you won't _have_ to worry about his motivations. If all he's trying to do is live tangentially to you, to deal with this kid his sister sicced on him and whom he doesn't like-- you can cope with that. You could understand, if he was just a victim of circumstance. But that doesn't explain why he keeps seeking you out, why he keeps asking if you're okay. It's not the true solution.

You rest your head on your hand. At least the first thought holds up: if he truly leaves you alone, you won't have to worry about him. Then again, he probably took your request to be temporary. That doesn't mean you can't repose it when he starts bothering you again.

It's a small but definite relief. Even so, the summer still looks bleak.

You stay late into the afternoon, adding to the list of links for Phasma, scrolling through tumblr, playing some exaggeratedly violent online games. You get hungry again, but ignore this, not wanting to ask Uncle Luke for more food and break the peace he's left you in. Eventually, however, he comes to you. You glare at him.

‘Hey, sorry to bother you, but I'm gonna need to get some real food soon. Do you want to go out for dinner, or would you rather just go home?’

… Sorry to bother you?

You blink at him. ‘Can I keep using my laptop at the restaurant?’

‘Sure.’

‘Let's go out for dinner.’ You start packing up. Your parents would never let you sit there and use your computer at a restaurant, or any sort of dinner table. Well, your dad might - you not-so-inconspicuously stare at your phone through most dinners with him anyway - but your mother never would, and she's the trump card.

You remember, back across the ocean, Uncle Luke teasing her about spoiling you, and you wrote it off as generic adult chatter-- but is that what this is? Back to your brochure, and your picture-perfect indulgent uncle? You shoulder your backpack.

‘What do you want to get?’ Uncle Luke asks as you head back to the car. ‘There's a few options. There's a diner, an Italian place, this great little family-run Vietnamese place, a pretty basic bar and grill..?’

‘I don't care. Whatever you want.’

‘Vietnamese okay?’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’

You end up spending almost two and a half hours at the restaurant. It turns out Uncle Luke knows the owners, and he keeps ordering additional small items for you to devour while they talk, which suits you just fine. You're kind of wondering if they're talking about you at all, but as soon as they got to what wonderful things your blessed cousin’s been up to you put your headphones on and don't want to backtrack. They probably aren't, anyways. You aren't anything worth mentioning, beyond the requisite introductions and judgemental glance at your laptop.

But at least the food is good, and at least you round off your email to Phasma nicely. The finished product contains a somewhat ridiculous number of links, but there’s really no point in staggering it, what with her time management skills and your awful memory. She’ll figure it out.

Back at the house you retreat to your room by default. If nothing else, you can stash your backpack and grab your wand-- and you do, and don’t know what to do next. 

Things are so much easier when you have internet access.

You sit on your bed, drumming your wand against your leg to some indeterminable rhythm. Your wand is one of the few parts of yourself that you actually like: long and pockmarked and roughly hewn like the rest of you, yes, but something you picked out because it spoke to you. Perhaps that is part of why it spoke to you. It’s not purely wood; the handle is leather and steel; it’s not just a stick; it has a crossguard. _Hawthorn and dragon heartstring, fifteen inches, highly unusual--_ the old man had said, and you can still remember his wispy rasp, in the way you remember these scattered moments-- and you could tell your parents thought it ridiculous, the way they were looking at this thing, pointy and as long as your forearm-- and yes, maybe you had to expand the pockets of every pair of trousers you owned, but as you reached for it the world slowed to a hazy tunnel, and some deep force flowed between it and your hand even before you had picked it up. And when you had-- something coursed through your entire body and its new extension, something dark and magnetic and hypnotic and beautiful, and red light flared from not just the primary tip but all three. You felt nothing like this upon selecting your first wand nearly four years ago-- or at least, if you had, you do not remember it, and you’re sure you would remember if this had ever happened before. 

So in a way you should thank Snoke, for breaking your last one. In a way, you should punch yourself in the fucking face.

You stand up, agitated. You’ve been sitting all day; you normally get a lot more running around than this. You’ll-- go for another walk in the woods. See if you can find the blood rock again, maybe. You're glad you didn't bother to take your shoes off.

You head back downstairs. Uncle Luke is installed on the sofa, painted with gentle blue light from the television, a wiimote in his wooden hand. You pause to look at the screen, frowning at your own curiosity. It shows a diver currently swimming through a cloud of tiny fish. ‘What are you playing?’

‘Endless Ocean,’ he says, glancing over at you before returning his eyes to the screen. ‘You play as a diver, and explore the ocean, and learn about types of fish.’ On the screen, the diver swims up to a manta ray. Of course that's the kind of game he would like. Objectiveless and educational. What a fucking _grown-up._

‘I'm going for a walk,’ you tell him, slightly transfixed by him gently petting the manta ray.

‘Okay. Be back before dark.’

‘I will.’ You tear your attention away from the screen and go out the front door. You're met by a cool breeze, not quite strong enough to ruffle your hair. The sun is low in the sky, casting you in the long shadow of the cabin. You head off into the woods in long-legged, loose-armed strides. You're doing your best not to think about Snoke: about the subtle energy field, hushed whispers between you and everything else in the world, that you've been aware of since he started training you and that only increased with the advent of your new wand. About how he had said you had power, had _potential,_ and how technically nothing he told you had been a lie. About him snapping your old wand in two, one clean movement of those skeletal wrinkle-scarred fingers, not even a minute into you standing against him. About everything that came after.

You stop walking, breathing hard, stooped over, hair in your eyes. Touch the scar on your face without thinking about it, and feel contaminated.

‘Diffindo!’ you shout, drawing your wand and making a slashing motion at a nearby tree in one fluid movement. It leaves a deep, violent cut, almost the whole trunk through, spattering you with woodchips. You snarl and repeat the movement, and even without the spoken spell you're able to gouge a second cut, leaving the tree marked with a large x-- and a third, and so on, until the tree groans and the furthest bit of trunk collapses under the abuse. It falls away from you with a crash muffled by forest debris. Several nearby birds caw and take off.

You stare at the jagged stump, chest heaving. Snoke always told you you were most powerful when you were most emotional. You feel it, now: something heady and heavy in your hands, the life you just severed. Your eyes are wild, teeth bared, knuckles white around your wand handle. There are woodchips in your hair. You are something feral that does not have to identify itself.

But this-- this is what Snoke wanted. This is giving in.

This is the only outlet you have.

You scream. Another few birds take off. There is nothing you can do that Snoke hasn't touched. There is nothing to be done.

You hear, in the distance, someone shouting something; someone calling your name. You whip your head round, and woodchips fly off of you like water from a dog. You still like one too, over-bright eyes fixing on the point from whence you heard Uncle Luke’s voice. You can still see the cabin from here. He must've heard you scream.

You do not move as you watch him approach. ‘Kylo,’ he says, with something resembling relief. ‘I thought you needed help.’ His eyes slide to the splintered tree stump, but he does not say anything about it. You wonder when he's going to stop running for you; when he's going to realise you're never going to stop crying wolf. It didn't take your parents long. You give him a week; he's a softie.

‘I don't.’ You don't sound very convincing, even to yourself. The crying doesn't help.

‘Do you want me to go back to leaving you alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Call me on your phone if you really do need help, okay? You can scream all you want, I won't bother you.’

Not only was that much faster than you expected; it's a completely different wording, a completely different tone. Nothing about him is telling you to stop. 

‘Okay,’ you say, oddly calmed. 

‘You have my phone number, right?’

‘Yes.’ He gave it to you at the airport, before you left.

‘That's right, I gave it to you at the airport. Alright. See you later.’ 

He turns, and strides away between the trees. You watch him go, trying to wrap your head around the boundaries of the invisible cage you know he's placed you in. You could-- leave, now, walk away and not come back. You have your wand and your phone, and as much as you would miss your skirts that's all that really matters. But where would you go? What would you do? You could wash up in some small grey town, wash dishes for a living, live in a roach-infested motel room next to a railway, and be kept awake each night by the rumbling of passing trains and the thought that this is how Hux must feel, all the time. You could hitchhike all the way back to England, stow away on freight trains and cargo ships and accept rides from strangers, show up battered and hungry on Phasma’s doorstep, and she'd keep you in the garden shed like a stray cat and listen to your disappearance being reported on the radio. You could walk straight into the lake and not stop, and it'd take them weeks to find your body.

And what is there, to stop you doing any of this? Only the vague promise of a good future-- and that's only by other people's approximation of good. Only the fact that it's easier to stay put. Only that people don't do that, don't just vanish. But you should, you should. There's nothing stopping you. You should start fresh. Change your name and spirit yourself away to somewhere Snoke and your family can't reach you.

Only-- none of those possible lives sound any better than the one you're currently living. You'd still be you. There's no escaping that, at least not until some new person rears their ugly head inside you, kills you like you did Ben. Or in the timeline where you kill yourself, but-- Hux would miss you. Phasma would miss you. And they're the only things you can think of that matter.

You're walking without paying attention to where you're going, simply heading deeper into the forest. Maybe you'll run away on accident, you think, if only you just keep walking. Or you'll get lost, climb a tree to get your bearings, fall out, split your head open, and bleed to death on the forest floor. That way it wouldn't be your fault.

Running on autopilot, you climb up some rocks to be able to reach the lowest branches of a nearby tree. You heave yourself up onto one and begin to climb. It's been a long time since you had a chance to climb a proper tree like this one, but you're still good at it. Your height works in your favour here, and you're strong, nimble. The bark is pleasantly rough, and it's challenging enough to keep you distracted, if only for a few minutes.

You stand once you're as high as you can go and survey your domain. You’re not quite tall enough to see over the full height of the forest, but it’s a different view from up here. You’re surrounded by green and branches and bird nests and the sky, expansive and still blue despite the growing hour, above you. You feel truly alone in the forest, in such a way that you did not realise you did not feel before now. It’s private, it’s peaceful, it’s beautiful. You scream because you can, and look around as if watching for an echo. Nothing reveals itself to you.

You look down. You can’t tell how high up you are, not in terms of numbers. You think, numbly, of jumping. You don’t know if it’d be enough to kill you; you don’t know how the science behind that works. It probably depends on the angle, and what you land on. You know you’d be injured, at the least. Perhaps too injured to move. Would you get out your cell phone and call Uncle Luke? Would he be able to find you, in the vast expanse of forest? Would you, in his absence, bother trying to survive?

Your trouser leg is still sticky. You haven’t been paying attention to it, distracted by the computer or yourself, but now it’s bothering you. You want to put some clean trousers on. That’s a future you can imagine: one where you go home and put some clean trousers on. Maybe take a shower, too, even though you already took one today. You’re all sweaty.

You linger in the tree a few moments longer and take a few selfies before taking the long way down. It’s a bit harder going, and you scrape both your palms trying to slide down a long section of trunk. You examine them once you're back on the ground: the scrapes are shallow but bloody, peppered with dirt. You wipe them on your shirt. You don't feel like healing them just yet. You'll do it before you get back so Uncle Luke won't fuss. They sting in the open air.

You do your best to meander back the way you came. You're not too proud to admit you might've gotten yourself lost, but you're not worried. You're good at finding your way. You think you walked more or less straight on the way here, and this _feels_ like the right way to go, anyway. The shadows of the trees are lengthening around you. The sky is turning lilac. 

You come out on the road leading up to the cabin, more or less on target. The first thing you see upon re-entry is Uncle Luke is still playing his fish game. He looks over at the sound of the door. You realise you forgot to heal your hands and hastily shove them in your pockets.

‘How was your walk?’ he says.

‘Fine. Where's the washing machine?’

‘It's in the mudroom, door next to the bathroom.’ He points.

‘Okay. Thanks.’ You leave to go upstairs. In the bathroom you examine your hands again. The skin around the scrapes is raw. You wash your hands, because that seems like a good idea, get out the remaining bits of dirt, and get out your wand. Take a deep breath, shoulders falling. Spread your left palm to the ceiling. Think of Hux’s dainty little hands and bone-white wand. ‘Episkey.’

You bite your lip as your palm burns and splinters with ice. You can see the new skin spreading over the wound like sped-up rot. It forms a somewhat splotchy gradient with the rest of the raw skin. It's innocuous enough. You touch it experimentally. It's numb; nothing worse. You repeat the process with your other hand, and get a similar result.

You take a shower, lingering in the steaming water without washing, barely moving. Your mind is blank, and therefore you are calm. Wouldn't it be nice if you were like this all the time? If you didn't have to think, or feel, anything at all?

You stay there till the water runs cold, and change into your pajamas while you're still damp. You gather up all the clothes you've worn so far - might as well, if you're going to be washing your jeans - and go back downstairs. The world outside the windows is dark. Uncle Luke has vanished to parts unknown.

You find the washing machine with little difficulty. It's in the same room you came through yesterday, the one with the concrete flooring and colourful storage. You still haven't explored the house properly. You don't know what half the rooms look like or contain. The discomfort of the unfamiliarity settles on you while you pour soap into the washer. This isn't your house; this isn't your washing machine. You are a stranger in a strange land. You look over your shoulder. There's no-one there, just a wall of tools and an assortment of buckets and winter coats and bicycle pumps. You feel an unnaturally strong urge to quit having your neck swivelled in this manner, and you heed it, breathing heavy. Your head feels full of a sort of dense mist. You have reached the end of the future you envisioned back in the forest. You do not know what to do now.

You sit on the washing machine and listen to it slosh beneath you. The process of getting up here, while probably the least toiling thing you have attempted all day due to your height, did not seem real: instead, distant, as though underwater, or through a movie screen. The decision to do this was not real. The action, therefore, was not real either. This is not your house. This is not your body, this is not your life. You touch the scar on your face without thinking about it.

Through some miracle your clothes find their way to the dryer, and you find yourself walking upstairs and settling in bed. You still haven’t unpacked your toothbrush; you still haven’t put sheets on your mattress. You can’t bring yourself to care about either of these things. It’s dark, dark as night. Your cousin is lying on her belly, kicking her feet in the air. She glows through the darkness; she blows a cloud of dandelion seeds into your face. You squint through them. ‘You could do it, you know,’ she says. ‘If you tried.’

You try to protest, but your throat is full of sand. ‘It’s not hard, caring about people,’ she continues. ‘I do it all the time.’

That’s not fair, nor is it the issue, nor is it correct. You care about Phasma and Hux so much it hurts you. You make a croaking sound.

‘And I think you would have fun, in robotics club.’ She studies the bare end of the dandelion. 

‘I can’t,’ you say. ‘I’m sorry,’ you say. You hate yourself. 

‘Hux likes it,’ she points out. You want to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo in the forest was an art swap between myself and [invernom;](http://invernom.tumblr.com/) I did the sketch and colours, and they did the lineart and shading.
> 
> According to the [Pottermore bit on wand woods,](http://pottermore.wikia.com/wiki/Wand_Woods) hawthorn wands "are complex and intriguing in their natures, just like the owners who best suit them. Hawthorn wands may be particularly suited to healing magic, but they are also adept at curses, and I have generally observed that the hawthorn wand seems most at home with a conflicted nature, or with a witch or wizard passing through a period of turmoil."
> 
> Additionally, dragon heartstring makes for powerful but unstable wands. c:


	3. Chapter 3

There's several things you notice over the next few days:

One: Uncle Luke keeps switching out the salt and pepper shakers. That's the only explanation you can come up with.

At first you thought-- you don't know what you thought, it's not like you routinely take note of pepper shakers-- but these ones are very noticeable. You thought you were just misremembering, the first time. Sure, you were pretty sure you hadn’t seen the honestly horrific cutesy-ceramic baby-faced flower monstrosities before, mostly because they would've given you nightmares, but your memory isn't really to be trusted in matters like this. But this morning they were gone, replaced by a pair of little wooden coffee pots labeled with _S_ and _P._ You'd narrowed your eyes at them in mistrust, picked one up and examined it. It was configured so the pepper comes out of the little triangular spout, which struck you as-- weirdly cute. And then Uncle Luke came over, so you hastily put it back down.

So he must be switching them out, though you can't fathom why. To mess with you, maybe. Or maybe he just has no life. Both, most likely. 

So you're going to keep an eye on that. Catch him at it, if you can. It's not a huge concern of yours, you're not _that_ obsessive-- if he's doing it to mess with you, it's not working. But it's also good to stay on top of things like that. Keep track of the attempts against you.

Two: despite this, Uncle Luke has apparently taken your request to be left alone to heart. He hasn't approached you to speak about anything other than food, and occasionally to let you know he's going out, and invite you to come with. You haven't accepted. You've been enjoying the peace, even if you're suspicious of his salt shaker activities.

(Is he trying to passive-aggressively smoke you out? Bother you enough that you-- what? Stop being such an antisocial little shit and acquiesce to whatever it is he hasn't told you he wants from you yet? Come crying to him because reality's falling apart? It seems like the sort of thing someone like him would do, set himself up to be your savior. Well you've got news for him: your reality’s already crumbled, and you're still managing fine on your own.)

This is still way better than him pretending to care about your feelings, though. You aren't bothering him, and you aren't being exploited for someone's sense of social fulfillment. You’ve had at least one screaming fit a day and he hasn’t intruded. You're fine. It's all fine.

You do need to ask him to take you back to the coffee shop soon. You were thinking tomorrow; that'll give Phasma a reasonable amount of time in which to reply. But you're not looking forward to it; not the asking, at least. The potentiality of a reply, certainly, but-- Phasma lives a long ways away from the library. She probably won't have made the trip again so soon. You're just getting your own hopes up.

Left alone without internet and nothing to do, you've played a lot of offline computer games, cast a lot of random spells for the fun of it, stared at the wall a lot, taken a lot of walks in the woods. You've even tried to sort out what the hell is going on with your knitting, to no avail. Phasma taught you last spring while you were bedridden and antsy, and this was to be your second real project: a laptop cosy, just two rectangles seamed together, nothing too extravagant. But as soon as you stated knitting on the airplane, it seems, your hands forgot what they were supposed to be doing. Your - fuck, you forget what it's called, the knitting equivalent of kerning - was all irregular, and you ended up with about five extra loops at odd points of attachment, and you didn't know what the fuck was happening so you gave up and stared out the window instead. You should probably just start over, you're not that far in, but you don't feel like it yet.

You've done some drawing, too, took your sketchbook out into the woods, but couldn't really get into it. You can only draw so many trees before getting bored, and Phasma’s nose still doesn't look right. Hux still eludes you as well: no matter how many times you try, you can't quite capture his _Huxishness_ to satisfaction. You don't really know what it is, even, beyond the vague essence of him. You draw him haughty, you draw him annoyed, you draw him with that rare, wicked smile that makes things inside you flutter-- and it all looks like him, sure, but it doesn't _feel_ like him. You aren't drawing _Hux._ This has always been an issue, even when you have him right in front of you: there's just no substitution for the real thing.

Three: a low ache has settled in your extremities. The past few nights you've been woken up by a combination of bad dreams and biting leg pain. A couple years ago, you’d have taken this as some newly physical symptom of one of the many things you're sure is wrong with you, but by this point you know better. You’re _growing_ again, however tall you are already, and pretty soon none of your favourite things will fit, or they will fit but they’ll be tighter so they won’t be your favourites anymore, and it’ll get harder and harder to get things that fit nice off the rack, because you’ll be too damn tall. And you don’t have any knowledge in the way of expanding garments via magic, creating matter is a level of advancement you haven’t yet reached, and nor do you know how to go about melding two fabrics into one. You should really look into that, but you don’t know where you’d get the resources outside the school library.

(Three of your four skirts aren’t going to be long enough for school anymore.)

And you’re probably going to need new shoes sooner or later, god fucking dammit, the ones you have are already bordering on painfully small, and shoe shopping is always a long and humiliating experience. Your feet are weird and oversized and boxy, trimmed with uncomfortably long toes, and they only make high tops so large, and there’s only so long you can fumble with your shoelaces before whatever adult deigned to escort you starts looking at you funny.

Four: Uncle Luke is going out tonight, and the dark, rumbling sky promises a thunderstorm.

You haven't come across the blood rock again in all your woodland wanderings, but you've got a feeling tonight's the night. It'll look so, so badass in the rain. If your sealant charm stuck, that is, and of course it did, you're good.

You sit on your still-bare bed by the open window and wait for the sound of his car to disappear between the trees. You linger several beats after, anticipation building in you to breaking point, before launching yourself off your bed and into action. 

You shuck your jeans off your hips and fling them across the room with your foot. Root through your trunk for your favorite skirt and pull it on in the mirror. (You considered each of your small supply - grey plaid and schoolgirl-pleated, shiny black and knee length and full circle, straight-sided and close-fitting denim - but decided this was most appropriate for the situation.) Tuck your t-shirt into the elastic waistband; tug on it so the edges balloon a little. Retrieve your wand from your bedside table and slip the blade through the little loop you sewed in the waistband for this purpose. Grab your hoodie; take a moment to admire yourself in the mirror. Peaky and awkward as ever, stoop-shouldered and big-eared and horribly scarred, but-- your outfit’s good. Your outfit’s really good.

You sklonk downstairs. The cabin feels different when Uncle Luke is gone, you've found. It feels less real than ever before; less of a living cliche and more of a dead one. The house is hollow and dreamlike, as though he is the anchor that keeps it in reality. You still like it better. You don't feel as nervous, don't feel as watched.

You trawl the cupboards for a snack before you go. You come across the tin of oysters you made Uncle Luke buy several days ago, and hesitate. You're going to have to eat them eventually, unless you want him to find out how pathetic and strange you truly are; buying food you have no desire to eat. Best do it now, when he's not around to see.

You tilt the box over the counter so the little silver tin slides out with a soft tap. It’s a pull top, of course it’s a pull top. You hate pull tops. You do your best to discourage the little tab from its position flush with the lid without implicating your fingernail in the process; to pull the lid back without pulling the tab off. You fail both, miserably, and in the following frustration tear the lid the rest of the way off with your bare hand.

Which is how you come to have a thin gash spanning the width of your palm, which, having gotten this far in life, you should’ve expected.

You rinse your hand in the kitchen sink to avoid sealing oyster grease in your wound. If nothing else, your healing spells have gotten a lot of practice. Over the past few days, you've tripped and scraped your palms on the landing, slipped and slit your thumb open with a knife, stepped in the broken glass on your bedroom floor, and bumped into a sharp outcropping of rock. All these times, you have bled, and all these times - with pauses of varying length to appreciate the artistry of the injury, of course - you have stopped yourself from bleeding with splintering fire and ice and Hux's memory. This one you'll heal right away: it's too thin, too invisible for you to continuously admire, and it _stings,_ like a paper cut. You probably hit some nerve endings. 

You dry your hand with a dish towel; a thin red line oozes out of the cut. ‘Episkey.’ The gash goes. The line of blood stays. You run your hand under the faucet again.

You return your attention to the oysters. They're these little brown things, crammed in the can with no spaces in between, shiny and smelly with oil. You fish - shit, _fish_ \- one out of the center, leaving a gap by which you can see the yellowish oil pooled at the bottom. They look even less appetising when you can see the whole thing. The bottom bit is all wrinkly. You pop it into your mouth before you can change your mind. 

It-- it doesn't _taste_ bad. It's fish, it's fine. But the _texture--_ it's all mushy, but not insubstantial like most mushy things are, instead it's all meaty and crumbly and gross, and you spit it out into the sink. It looks even worse now. You push it down the drain with the end of the scrub brush.

Uncle Luke won't know if you dump the rest of the tin in the trash. And take out the trash, just to be sure. Only you don't yet know where to take the trash out _to_ around here, so you just shove it deep into the trash can and rearrange the stuff on top so it can't be seen. When you withdraw your hand two of your fingers are bleeding. You wash your hands for the third time in the last five minutes, and heal them. Normally you’re pleased with how danger prone you are - you get to admire yourself cut up and bloody on a daily basis - but right now you’re just pissed at the oysters.

Which it still smells of in here. You scour the fridge for something else fragrant-- lemon juice, that's, that's perfect. You pour some down the drain and run the garbage disposal. The scent of lemons overwhelms the kitchen. There. No harm done. You eat three granola bars instead; just shove them in your face like you’re some kind of trash compactor. Just not one that’ll let you throw away oysters.

Ha. You suck.

The boom of approaching thunder motivates you to get moving again. You sit on the couch and wrestle your feet into your tennis shoes. Rather than go through the ordeal of tying your shoelaces, you tuck them inside your shoes. They're getting small enough that it doesn't matter, anyway. They're not coming off.

You step into the outdoor air, pregnant with the coming storm. It's not night yet, so it's not quite dark yet, either, but clouds have blotted out every last bit of sky. The world around you hums with a sort of electric excitement. It's going to be a good night.

You set off into the woods. You can remember, you think, the approximate route you took the first day here. It feels strange to think that that was under a week ago. You feel so much older, compared to then, so much bigger. It's the storm, you think. You're tuned in to it more intensely than you ever are anything else. You can feel its raw, crackling power shiver through you, not just through the air and through you as an extension, but through _you,_ yourself. It's terribly intimate. The storm is _yours._

It starts to rain. Great, fat drops pepper your shoulders and beat on your raised hood. The sky flashes with lightning, casting the trees around you in momentary shadow. The forest is alight with movement: the rain, quickly gaining momentum, the branches rustling in the wind, the shifting shadows. The rain batters your face, but you resist the urge to angle it at the ground, looking around for any large rocks as you go. You've not gone far enough yet. You could-- find it via magic, you know how to do that. But there's something-- spiritual, almost, about finding it yourself, about your purposeful wandering, about having to linger in the storm, about being soaked to the bone and rippling with raw power. Your legs are kinda cold, but you ignore this. You're at your best.

After - you do not know how long, it seems a glorious eternity - you see its silhouette in the oncoming gloom. You know it's the right rock, even before you get close; you can feel it through the storm. You can feel your heart beat in your chest, your excitement focus in the space around and between your eyes. It's, it's here. You've done it; completed your pilgrimage.

You take selfies with the blood rock. You were right, it looks super badass. Your sealant charm stuck. It's gotten darker, but there's still just enough light to photograph by. You take photo after blurry rain-streaked photo, over fifty in all. You get one of yourself in motion, your hair blown across your face; one illuminated white by a flash of lightning; one turned a waterlogged blur by a raindrop on the camera lens; one in which your scar looks pretty great, actually, melding with your rain-soaked face like it's meant to be there. You levitate your phone and leave it hanging midair - easiest thing in the world, even moreso than usual, what's a levitation charm to a _storm_ \- to get several full-body shots, you in all your soaked, beskirted glory. You look _good._ You look like something that actually has some business existing, for its own sake and that alone: some sort of wild animal, or force of nature. Who will question you? Why should you ever question yourself? Your phone soars back to your hand when your reach for it, no wand necessary.

As you stand there, marvelling at yourself, the air splits with a crack and flash of blue light, earsplittingly nearby. You jump and look around to see whether or not you just narrowly missed getting struck by lightning, and find a nearby tree has caught fire. You watch it wide-eyed as it takes hold of an entire branch, the rain failing to put it out. It keeps going. What’ll happen if it doesn’t stop? Will it consume the entire tree, the entire forest? Spread to eat up the cabin as well? Will Uncle Luke come home to find only rocks and your charred remains? It’s brilliant against the dark backdrop of the storm.

You’re not entirely sure why you do it, but you clamber up the branches of an adjacent tree to meet the fire head on. Maybe it’s some strange fascination, some desire for power over something; maybe it’s because you’ve grown to like this forest, wandering through it the past few days; maybe it’s because you _are_ the storm, and you refused to be outshone by your own accidental creation. You edge out on a slippery branch, one arm braced on the tree trunk, the other pointing your wand. ‘Aguamenti,’ you command.

You do not produce a small stream of water, as is the prescribed effects of that spell, but a full-blown shower spreading from the tip of your wand, irregular but strong. It blends in with the falling rain-- it _is_ the falling rain, made of the same stuff, redoubling its efforts in that area. It’s still not enough. You snarl, concentrate on the feeling of power coursing through your outstretched arm and the intensity of the storm and of yourself and on the stream of water you are creating - _creating,_ like some kind of god - and on how this forest is _yours_ and the fire is not allowed to take it from you, it belongs to you, all that you see belongs to you-- and the shower intensifies into a jet stream, and you’re able to aim it into blasting the fire away. 

Your jet stream dies as the fire does, quickly trickles out as you lower your wand. You’re breathing heavy. You want to do more magic under the influence of the storm, now that you’ve got that first taste. You look to the sky: you’re sure you can do nonverbal magic in this condition, shit, you summoned your phone _wandlessly_ a couple minutes ago. You jab your wand straight into the air above your head, thinking not of the spoken word associated with your desired spell but the effects: bursting, bright red light, firework explosions-- and it works, it works, a bead of smoke and light the size of a basketball erupts from your wand tip and blows aside tree branches as it shoots towards the sky. It breaks up the clouds above you, tearing into open sky, and divides into however many comets that punch smaller holes in the cloud cover on their way back down to the forest, fizzling out before they land, harmless light.

You look around, looking for more magic to perform, and a terrible, exhilarating thought seizes you: before you can stop and question it, you have let your brace on the tree trunk go and are running down towards the end of the branch. You slip before you can jump off properly and fall at an awkward angle rather than the jump you were planning, and shit, fuck, you're not prepared-- the ground is arriving faster than you're able to recognise--

You somehow react fast enough to buoy yourself up via magic and avoid becoming a pancake. You still hit the ground - after a moment of thrill and confusion and feeling what you are seeing before you is not quite real - but not as hard as you might've, and your ankles are all okay and your ass isn't too sore. You didn't jump from _that_ high up. You pick yourself up, only a little shakily. The backs of your legs are covered in little clumps of wet dirt and bits of bark. You don't feel any worse than you ever did after jumping out of playground swings as a child: a little stiff, a little strange, the world not yet resolved around you, but no worse for wear. You smooth out your skirt as you walk slowly back over to the blood rock. You touch the place where you smeared the blood, and the jagged edges of the double gouge. You are soaked, truly, to the bone, and it's properly dark out by this point, and you're pretty chilly. Maybe it's time for you to head back. You take a final look at the blood rock and head back between the trees.

Here’s something for you to consider: you might be lost. You usually consider yourself a good navigator, but you're usually in cities, buildings, Hogwarts castle. Here there are no man-laid roads or corridors, no way to remember lengths and turns, and it is open for you to wander yourself into oblivion. The rain is beating down on the roof of your hoodie. Your shoes are covered in mud. Everything feels different in the dark. The moonlight you might’ve had to see by is eliminated by the cloud cover, and you have to light your wand to see where you’re going. You’re still too stubborn to find your way back to the cabin by magic, though knowing you have that safety net helps you quiet the ball of fear building in your chest. You’re pretty sure you’re walking in the right direction. You run your fingertips over the bark of trees as you pass them. The rain is gaining momentum. If someone were to sneak up behind you, you wouldn’t be able to hear them over all the pattering. You whip round at that thought; examine all the spaces around you with the flashlight beam from your wand and your eyes sharp. There’s no-one there. You knew that. You keep walking.

A splotch of colour catches your attention from the corner of your eye and your wand is on it in a flash. There’s a garden gnome - the muggle kind, not a _gnome_ gnome - in a tree. It’s got a fishing rod and a little Hawaiian shirt. There’s a little plastic dinosaur dangling from the fishing rod. You stare at it. This feels like the most bizarre thing you’ve seen in a very long time: you, coming down off your rainstorm high, and there’s this fucking garden gnome, what, just sitting here, in this tree? Did Uncle Luke put it there? His cabin is the only sign of humanity for miles, and you’re pretty sure you’ve not left that radius. What, and _why,_ the fuck?

You take a picture of it with your phone, just so you know you didn’t imagine it, and maybe so you can send it to Phasma later. It looks really fucking creepy, smiling down at you from up in the branches, illuminated by the camera flash and wandlight but otherwise surrounded by darkness, the streaks of rain glowing white in the flash. You look back at it after you keep walking. It stares at you. You continue with that walking thing. You definitely feel like you’re being followed, now, and keep stopping to turn around and check despite yourself. No shadowy figures resolve themselves out of the darkness.

You feel more relief than you'd like to admit when you see the gap in the trees that means the forest has spit you out somewhere on the road up to the cabin. The trek up it is longer than it has been, and you keep up periodically checking over your shoulder, this time with the additional motive of looking for headlights. You're not afraid of getting run over - they can be your fucking guest - but you're scared Uncle Luke will come up behind you on his way home and see you in your skirt. Should you spot the telltale glow coming up behind you, you decide, you will extinguish your wand and fade back into the trees, and your grip on your wand tightens as you prepare for that eventuality. It does not happen. You round the corner that leads up to the great shadow of the cabin with your heart pumping hard, but you close that final stretch of distance unseen and unscathed.

You realise the reason for this as you draw near: Uncle Luke's car is already in the driveway. Shit. You didn't prepare for this. But the lights in the living room are as dark as you left them - he's likely deeper in the house, and you'll have a decent chance to sneak in and change out of your skirt before he sees you. Alternatively he's sitting in the living room with the lights off. (You like to do that, sit and watch the rain in the dark.) But that's not normal adult behaviour, at least not in your experience. Then again, he's not exactly proved himself to be a normal adult. The living room is not safe. But there are two side doors, and one leads directly to the washing machine. You creep round the side of the house. This is what Hux must feel like, you think, though when Hux sneaks out it isn't to take pictures of a blood-stained rock and do half-crazed magic in a rainstorm. Also, he'd change out of his binder before he got home, and would have a contingency plan in case the side door is locked, because he's smarter than you.

But the side door is not locked, and Uncle Luke is not standing in the darkened mudroom like the particularly dramatic sort of television villain, and you enjoy a brief moment of relief before stripping down to your t-shirt and boxers, tossing the rest of your clothes in the washer and leaving your shoes by the door. You'll wash what you're left wearing, too, but you'd rather get caught creeping upstairs in something that passes as pajamas than buck naked. You should wash everything you've worn in the past few days, too, while you're at it. It's bizarrely rare to find yourself doing laundry twice in as many weeks; you should take advantage of this abundance of productivity before you fall back into wearing the same five things for a month without washing them. You're not sure what you're going to say if Uncle Luke spots you in the living room. You doubt his lack of questions would extend to finding you soaking wet and half naked. You reach out blindly for potential cover stories while you begin the surreptitious voyage to your bedroom. You can't think of anything. Your footfalls sound much too loud against the dark, echoing backdrop of the cabin.

The living room is empty, or at least, you do not see him, and if he is there he takes no action to make himself known. You turn on neither the hall nor your bedroom light, as though this will attract the attention of someone who is apparently elsewhere, instead changing into dry underwear and your pajamas and finding all your dirty clothes by wandlight. You feel safer, now, going back downstairs fully clothed. There's no longer anything particularly suspicious about your behaviour, other than you being extremely damp. You just need to stay with your laundry til you can spirit it back to the bottom of your trunk. Fuck, you should've grabbed your laptop. You'll go back and get it once you get the washer started.

You settle on top of the washing machine again, this time with your laptop and mp3 player to keep you company, and while away the time as best you can. You turned the lights off before sitting down, liking the encompassing dark of all the house you’re aware of, and that as long as you keep your screens dim it allows you to watch the rain. You like, too, sitting on something that's rumbling around and making loud sloshing noises, though you're not sure of why other than it just seems _good,_ the same way your favourite songs and rough linen fabric and being out in the rain are all _good,_ in ways you adore but can’t quite and wouldn’t want to explain. You’re-- vaguely aware that this is not something a normal person would enjoy, but the same part of you that is defensive and shy is also defiant. You’ll sit on this washing machine and you’ll like it. You laugh a little to yourself, and it sounds odd against the quiet of the house, though the effect is dampened by the rain. Fuck, _dampened._ You didn’t do that on purpose.

What’s also odd, as it settles on you through the darkness, is the knowledge that you just experienced something that definitely qualifies as a _good evening,_ despite it including you jumping out of a tree and spending probably far too long wandering around the woods in an increasingly paranoid manner. It’s been so, so long since you’ve felt things have gone your way, it seems far too good to be true. Something, you’re sure, is going to resolve itself out of the darkness to take it away, the shadowy figure you watched for over your shoulder all the way home, and that stirs up your memories of Snoke. A self-fulfilling fucking prophecy. You’re already sitting sideways so you can enjoy the rain through the window behind the washing machine, but still readjust yourself so you don’t have to turn your shoulders so much in turning away from your screen to stare out into the night. He’s not fucking allowed to take this from you. He’s already taken so fucking much, so many days that could’ve been good ones. You close your eyes and shiver, imagining him despite yourself. You can almost feel his hand on your shoulder, something that would’ve once ignited pride and affirmation in your belly, and now makes you flinch and try to recoil from your own memory. The skin on your shoulders and back is crawling. No, fuck, no, this is what you were managing to avoid. He’s not allowed to do this to you. He’s not.

You force your eyes open. You are alone in the dark mudroom. There is nothing on your shoulder but a couple layers of black fabric. Your arms drew themselves in and across your chest of their own accord, and they feel good there, but you make yourself lower them anyway in an attempt to return yourself to the state you were in half a minute ago. You really should know better by now than to think about how good things are going. That only jinxes it. You look back at your computer screen, but it doesn’t hold anything more interesting than a game of minesweeper, so you keep looking out the window instead. You have your mp3 player turned down low enough to hear the rain and the slosh of the washing machine. 

It really is beautiful, you think, rain, though beautiful seems far too soft a word for it. Something someone simpering and enslaved to traditionality might use. You can’t think of what word might be better. But you can still feel some of the storm in your veins, and you know you are looking at something that is far greater, and that you love far more, than anything else in the world. Even Hux, who is something like a hurricane condensed to human form, cannot compete with something so huge, so powerful, so magnificent. 

He never appreciates rain properly, Hux, though you think he might were he here with you now. He would’ve been there with you, in the forest, unhappy to be getting so wet but willing to follow you out of sheer curiosity and fascination with the way you talk about things like storms and blood rocks, and he would’ve seen you-- and oh, but you were only getting started, using magic. You would’ve done so much more with him there, just to show him what you can do, what you can embody. His eyes would’ve been grey in the stormy darkness and you would’ve set them alight with the knowledge of all the power you held in that moment under your skin. You’d have committed the look on his face to your memory forever: that look you’ve seen in rare moments when he talks about how no-one can stop him, enthralled and intoxicated by the notion of such power existing so close that he might see it, touch it, have it. That, but elevenfold, and directed at _you,_ greedy and longing, and you’d know, then and forever, that you were both something he wanted and needed, not just for your command of the storm but for the recognition that you were _like him,_ an unstoppable being, and together you’d rule the universe, and he’d never say another word against the rain. It’d be his ally, and you’d know for sure he’d never leave you.

Alternatively you’d have left him reading and finishing the tin of oysters in the living room, with his feet on the coffee table and that green throw blanket you’ve seen around draped over his lap. At least then you wouldn’t have to listen to his complaints on the way over there. And you’d tell him about it, now, with him seated on the dryer. You’re not sure what you’d say, exactly, but you’d wax poetic, and he’d listen: _I could feel it, you know, in my veins, in my very bones. I was the storm, or a part of it, at least. I was a conduit for it, an embodiment of it. I was made of water and light, and I was the greatest thing I’ve ever known. I should’ve done more magic, I’m not sure why I didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything I should do. I will, for next time. I know there will be a next time. There’s no going back for me, now, not now I’ve felt this._

Or something like that. (You will try to think of things for next time, though.) This seems the more plausible turn of events; that Hux would’ve prefered to stay back than follow you out into the storm chasing the idea of a cool photograph and an overfondness for getting rained on. That way it could’ve happened the way it happened in this reality, only right now you’d be sharing your selfies and hush-voiced descriptions rather than sitting alone in the dark. You wonder what he’d have to say about the garden gnome. _What is that,_ most likely, with a sort of horrified, accusatory tone and an absolutely hilarious expression, and you laugh to yourself again. The noise is less strange and less jarring than it was before.

Not long after the washer quiets beneath you, and you transfer your clothes by the light of your wand and the dryer, uncomfortably bright following your dimmed computer screen. The washing machine just isn’t the same when it’s not running, so you give the dryer a go. Cons: the rumbling is different, and louder, but minus the sloshing. Pros: the rumbling is more violent and kind of cool, and it’s _warm._ You think you prefer the washer overall, but the dryer holds its own appeal, and you certainly don’t mind sitting here while waiting to extract your skirt. You yawn hugely; you wonder what time it is. Almost two in the morning, according to your computer. No wonder you didn’t run into Uncle Luke; he’ll have gone to bed. How much of the time since he left did you spend out there versus in here? It doesn’t really matter, especially since you weren’t paying attention to the clock when he left, and wouldn’t be able to estimate how long it’s been.

Just as you are feeling truly secure, alone and cocooned in blanket of darkness, the side door opens. You jump, terror shooting through your arms and directly to your heart, and you snatch your wand back up to point it at the newcomer, the dark shape of whom started when you did and is now standing with its hands raised and apart in standard surrender. ‘Kylo,’ it - he - says. It’s Uncle Luke, of course it’s Uncle Luke. But-- he’s coming from outside? After already having arrived home? What was he doing out there, at two in the morning? You don’t lower your wand. ‘Kylo, it’s just me,’ he says. ‘I’m not a burglar, I promise. Sorry I’m back so late; I didn’t think you’d still be up.’ He lowers his hands to enter the room and turn on the lights. You slowly lower your wand, squinting against the brightness. 

Uncle Luke is wearing a bright orange track jacket with a couple of patches on the arm, and something on the back that he turns out of view before you can get a good look at it. He’s barely wet at all, and isn’t carrying an umbrella, which strikes you as even odder. What was he _doing?_ His wording, too, strikes you, and you continue squinting at him past the physical need to. ‘Did you just get back?’

‘Yeah. I thought I mentioned I’d be out late, sorry about that.’

‘But-- the car?’

‘Huh?’ He looks over his shoulder as though expecting to see a car there. ‘Oh. I took the other car.’

‘Oh.’ You didn’t realise there were two cars. You suppose that explains why he hasn’t been putting the one you’ve seen in the garage. You were kind of wondering about that, but not about to ask. Okay, but how did he get it out of the garage and end up with the other car still in the driveway? You’re not about to ask that either. It probably involves a lot of getting in and out.

He looks-- definitely a little uncomfortable, and more than a little shifty. You frown. What more is there to this? What is special about taking the second car? Is he lying? He obviously didn’t take the first one, and you’re not sure why he doesn’t just say he apparated into town if he did - but, no, you definitely heard a car leave earlier this evening. What is he hiding? You’ll have to take a look in the garage.

‘Hey, I’m gonna get to bed.’

‘Okay.’ You’re glad he didn’t ask what you were doing. You were prepared to glare and tell him _laundry,_ but really don’t have an acceptable explanation beyond that.

‘See you in the morning.’

You don’t say anything. He leaves, turning the lights back off for you as he does. Well. That’s nice of him, at least. You return your attention to your laptop, or at least try to. You can’t think of anything that would make sense for him to hide about the second car. Of course, it’ll probably be a lot easier to tell once you’ve seen said car. The thought that he’s actively hiding things from you settles in your stomach and makes your throat constrict. You knew, of course, that he would do this, of course he’s got secrets, of course he doesn’t fucking trust you-- but you hadn’t _thought_ about it before. Your shoulders tingle unpleasantly. Of course, of fucking course. And here he was being-- borderline alright. The maw of the unfamiliar house opens beneath you. You were a fool, a fucking fool for ever letting your guard down for a moment. Who knows what he’s hiding? Who knows what he could do to you with it? Only him, only him. And you’re in his space, his territory, at his mercy. Fear locks its jaws around your throat. You’ve got to get in that garage, you’ve got to _find out--_ but, no, it’s probably not going to be visually obvious-- but it’s at least worth a look. It’s at least worth a look. You need to find out what you can. And he’s gone to bed, so now is the perfect time.

You carefully, quietly, move your electronics over to the washer and dismount. What if he hasn’t really gone to bed, you think, glancing around the darkness. What if he’s waiting for something like this. What if he realised he let something slip, and that you might’ve guessed. You have no way of knowing, if he’s waiting for you. If you’ve just bumped your toe against something dark and terrible, and now he’s lingering to see if he needs to stop you uncovering more. He never did say what he was doing in town.

You peek, cautiously, into the hallway, though you’re not sure the good it will do. The door creaks as you open it and you jump, shoulders hunched like a cat, sure he’s going to be standing outside it, waiting to do-- whatever, to you, to stop you, knock you out, wipe your memory, _hurt you, literally fucking murder you--_ okay, okay, stop. Ask yourself: are you okay with dying? Yes. The answer is yes. Okay. Nothing to be afraid of, then. If he kills you, you can thank him and then die and never have to worry about anything like this ever again. It’s okay. You’re okay.

But the hallway is vacant, at least as far as you can see, and there is light and sound coming from under the bathroom door. Now’s your chance, then, to slip out unnoticed. He probably didn’t even notice you noticed anything. Or he’s biding his time, or he’s simulating a presence in the bathroom somehow to throw you off your guard-- but no. You have to do this at some point, and better sooner than later, so now’s your chance. You close the door as slowly and carefully as you can, and it only creaks a little. That may be too much. But, no, now’s your chance, you’re doing this, you’re doing this, you’re not afraid to die. Every noise you make seems far, far too loud, every footstep a screaming harbinger of doom as you creep across the mudroom. Any second now, Uncle Luke is going to open the door--

You make it out the back door without it creaking too much, and idle in relief on the back step for a few moments. The rain is loud, compared with the quiet of the indoors. It’s kinda cold out, actually. You shiver and make for the garage door. It’s locked. You don’t know why you didn’t expect this. ‘Alohomora,’ you try, voice muffled by the rain, just in case he hasn’t sealed it against being magically opened, which he probably has, but-- no, the lock clicks, and you’re in.

It’s very dark in the garage. There’s a window, but the stormy outside lends no illumination. Rather than turn on the light and risk attracting attention you light your wand. There is, indeed, a second car parked inside. You can’t see anything special about it, other than a weird paint job. It’s white - and very dirty for it - with two red stripes going down the nose and sides, but with breaks in them, and cutting off before a large red block on each back door, then followed by more, smaller stripes. There’s a weird logo in the same red on the top, like a bird with a star for its head spreading its wings in a circle. The underbelly is truly, spectacularly muddy, even for a car that must pick up a lot of dirt anyway. 

You try to peer inside the window, but all you see is your wandlight reflected back at you. The door is locked, but you cast _alohomora_ again, whispered into the darkness, and it clicks open. The locks must be to keep potential muggle thieves out, you think, rather than you. Does that mean he doesn’t care if you see this? You open the door. The upholstery is black. The steering wheel is on the wrong side-- right, right, America. The seatbelts involve way more than the usual number of straps. There’s an object sitting in the front seat-- a helmet, white and red like the car, with a yellow visor and a chin strap and the same logo from the cartop on the sides. You frown. Is this a race car? It doesn’t look particularly like one, outside of the paint job and the seatbelts, but what do you know? Your biggest experience with them is the vague childhood memory of matchbox cars, and the reasoning that they’re probably fancier and somewhat mechanically different. Your dad loves racing, so you do your best to interact with it as little as possible.

But what, then, was Uncle Luke doing? Is he a secret race car driver? Is that really what he’s hiding? Or is there something else here? You cast your wand about the rest of the garage, looking around. There’s a lot of random shit on the shelves lining the walls and stacked beneath it. You go and rummage through all the boxes you can see, briefly examine all the items on the shelves, make your way around the room. There’s a lot of things you think are car parts or similar, a lot of tools, a lot of things like lawn chairs and milk crates and an enormous flashlight and another garden gnome, which makes you jump. It's all normal garage stuff. There’s nothing obviously wrong here. You check under the car. Nothing.

Which means either-- this is it, this is all there is, all that he was, whatever reason, hiding, or there’s something that can’t be seen here. It’s probably the latter; this is no enormous secret, and besides, why should anything be this easy. You glance around the garage one more time. It suddenly hits you how tired you are, how late it is, how nice it would be to fall asleep. It strikes you how heavy the skin on your shoulders and eyelids is, how strangely itchy, how much it weighs you down. You want to go see if your laundry’s done, and go up to bed. But you don’t want to go to bed, not now, not with this hanging over your head. _You are not afraid to die,_ you remind yourself. But didn’t you used to be? You can remember the thrill of terror you felt as Snoke raised his wand against you, drew the small body you once thought brittle to its full height. Snapped your only means of defense clean in two. You rub the scar on your shoulder, itching with fear, the world swimming around you. Nowhere is safe, nowhere is safe. But you aren’t afraid to die anymore, not after all you’ve seen, all you’ve felt. You can go back inside, and if you die you’ll be glad. 

(Hux and Phasma will miss you terribly.

Will they, though?

Why should they?)

  
  


You’re crying. You want to go to bed. You want to die, but you don’t want Uncle Luke to kill you. You want to know what’s going on here. You don’t want to deal with anything, anything at all, ever again. You want to shut off. You want to drop dead here; pass out and never wake up. You sway on your feet, rock back and forth, cry and whine. Why hasn’t the world ended yet? Why hasn’t everything gone black? You want it to, you so desperately want it to. Why can’t the world just acquiesce to your will? Why can’t things go your way for once? All you’re asking for is death.

You suppose, then, that you should go back inside.

It takes you a few moments, or perhaps more than a few, of continuing to tremble in the dark, before some unknowable force pilots you back to the house. Your feet are muddy from your brief time outside. You don’t know what you’re doing here, in any sense of the words, but you do know you need to retrieve your laundry before Uncle Luke has a chance to find it. The dryer has stopped. The dryer light, again, is far brighter than it should be, and you recoil and start crying again. You don’t even know why, other than that it hurts, raw and rubbing against your mind. You sit there with your eyes screwed shut for a few moments. Your mind is fuzzy, exhausted, overworked. You’re still brimming with worry about Uncle Luke, but none of it’s in words anymore. You gather up your clothes blindly, only opening your eyes to make sure you got everything and push the door shut. Your laptop, too, glows, but the brightness is turned down from earlier and it’s angled away from you, reflected in the windows. You don’t really have the hands to carry it and your mp3 player up with your arms full of laundry. You push it shut. It can. Stay there, til morning. It’s okay.

(You come back down and get it, and your mp3 player, after dropping your clothes on your bedroom floor.)

You collapse on your bed and curl up. Your eyes sting from tears and tiredness, and you’re sure you won’t be able to sleep, what with the tangled mess in your head and the little prickling pains that started up again in your legs at some point - but exhaustion, and the pattering of the rain outside your window, lull you to sleep soon enough.

Hux is sitting at the foot of your bed. His eyes are stormy grey, his hair messy, his nose puffy and purpling. He is looking at you with a defiant sort of reverence, dripping blood on your duvet. You know exactly what happened to him, can picture it, in your mind’s eye: a large, pale fist, attached not to a body but a concept, making a wide arc through the air as Hux tries and fails to avoid recoiling, flinching, cowering, raising his arms in a vain attempt to protect himself. ‘Hux,’ you say.

‘You’re right, you know,’ he says, as though he did not hear you. ‘You’re made of the storm.’

You stare at him, stare at the way he is staring at you. It is everything you imagined, earlier - only better, because he thinks you’re beautiful, only worse, because this time it’s real. ‘You’re made of storms,’ he repeats, ‘And I’m made of knives, and you’re so very, very foolish, Kylo.’

You gape at him. He’s glowing. His hair is on fire. His blood is on fire. His eyes are on fire. You are on fire.

‘Did you really think,’ he continues, ‘That I wouldn’t care, if you left? That it wouldn’t _matter?’_ His voice is shaking. He puts a hand to his nose as if to catch some of the blood. He’s not on fire anymore. He’s flickering.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say.

He, again, ignores you. ‘I need you, Kylo. I need your help taking over the world. You can’t die. I won’t let you. You’re too important.’

He is holding your hand, clutching it tight. His skin is cold, clammy, but somehow it is pleasant and comforting, like being out in the rain.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help it.’

‘You can help _me,’_ he says, and this is what makes guilt clog your throat. ‘No, stop it,’ he says. ‘Don’t _do_ that. You’re going to make me cry. I lied, Kylo. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.’

His hand is on your face, now, on your cheek. You lean into it. You’re starving, you realise. 

‘I’ve always been starving,’ he says.

‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’ you ask.

‘I’m psychic,’ he says. ‘I’m made of psychic knives.’

‘Whoa,’ you say.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘It’s brilliant.’

And then his head turns into that of a giant garden gnome, and you scream and wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's art by [invernom](http://invernom.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so when i first started writing this fic i thought all kylo's self harm would just be enthusiasm about accidentally injuring himself and warned accordingly in the opening notes.
> 
> that's. no longer the case. i changed the opening & will delete this note later, but just so my old readers know.
> 
> also: if you haven't figured it out by now, this doesn't correspond to harry potter canon, because jkr doesn't know how to worldbuild. if any of you want to be infodumped at about the hogwarts curriculum, hmu
> 
> hoo boy welcome to this chapter

You wake from a final stretch of drifting in and out of fitful sleep to pale sunlight painting large squares across your bed and piles of clothing. One of the first things you notice, as you blink tiredly at the room and wonder what time it is, is your skirt, mp3 player, and laptop, three of the most important things you own, have been left haphazardly strewn on top of the rest of the rubble. That must've been you, that did that. It was you; you remember it: retrieving the latter two items from on top of the washing machine had been the last act of giving a fuck you had been able to perform last night. Another thing you notice is your wand is still more or less where you had taken to clutching it after the nth time it poked you through your pajama pocket: by your loosely curled hand, next to your pillow. This surprises you slightly - normally you toss and kick and turn - but you are more concerned with taking it up again, and its leather handle is a comforting sign of you having some chance to defend yourself. Another thing you notice is your throat is scratchy and raw to the point of being painful.

You spend a while just lying there, clutching your wand, and oh wow, even in your head that sounds so much like innuendo. You could masturbate, but, like, nah. You have no idea what time it is. You know you'll sleep til eleven, noon, later, when given the chance, but you're still so tired, and you slept so sporadically, it doesn't seem possible that it could be that late. It occurs to you, now, and it _should've_ occurred to you last night - you feel like it might've, in one of the anxious, stretching stretches between sleep - that while you slept would've been the perfect time for Uncle Luke to sneak in and kill you. That might've been nice, actually. No muss, no fuss. You'd just never wake up.

But you appear, as far as your limited knowledge can inform you, to still be alive, and you can't bring yourself to be as crushingly afraid of the possibility as you were last night. It doesn't seem quite as likely, now, for one: your parents would probably have something to say about it, and Uncle Luke is big on the familial obligation. It'd be far less work for him if he just wiped your memory. Not that he's behaved in a logical manner thus far, but for another, you simply don't care as much anymore. If an untimely demise is lurking around the corner for you, that's just how it's going to be. It's not like you'll be around to feel anything about it. It's not like you'll be able to do anything about it, either; you saw how that went, in the past. You know you only survived because Snoke, for whatever perverse reason, wanted you to. You feel faintly ill; more than a little shaky.

Your throat really is bothering you.

You roll onto your back so you can get your phone out of your pocket and check the time. It's out of battery. That happened last night, too. You remember it. The arm holding it in view feels unreasonably heavy. You let it fall back to the covers with a soft _flumph._

You really can't think of a good reason to get out of bed. You shut your eyes. It's probably early, you reason. The light from the windows feels like early light, and it's possible the reason Uncle Luke hasn't come for you yet is he himself is still asleep. Maybe you should fall back asleep, too. Give him the chance. You can't think of anything better to do.

But after - you have no idea how long, several minutes? Ten, maybe? You tire of trying to fall asleep yet again, and open your eyes and roll back onto your side. Your phone slides off your thigh and loses itself in the covers. You don’t really care. Are you coming down with something? Your tiredness is just run of the mill tiredness, you think, but your throat hurts a lot. You rub at it, as though that will help; then clutch at it, as though you are testing the waters of what it would take to strangle yourself. You know it's not possible; that as soon as you begin to lose consciousness your grip would loosen, and that you would need a lot more force than you can currently bring yourself to provide. At least, you think so. You wonder if you roll over into your pillow, if you could suffocate yourself that way. Babies do it all the time, you know that. That's all you are, a big baby. Only, no, that conjures up mental images of an enormous, hideous infant in your bed, and that's terrifying. You try to think about something else, but don't know what. God.

Okay, here's something: you were going to - your internal monologue wants to say _visit Phasma_ but no, that's not right - you were going to ask to be driven back down to the coffee shop today. Of course, that was before the idea of asking anything of your uncle became utterly terrifying. You really do want to see if Phasma's written back, but-- you also don't want to do anything ever again. Particularly anything involving Uncle Luke, or getting out of bed. Fuck. You reach over the side of your mattress and try to reach the charger plugged in beneath your bedside table. You can do it, if you roll on your belly and scoot right up to the edge. On the first try you get the cord for your mp3 player. On the second try you also get the cord for your mp3 player. On the third try you remember which cord you were grabbing earlier, and emerge successful. Your phone quickly fades back to life. It's half past seven in the morning. You have no strong feelings about this. 

Here’s another thing: what the fuck is up with Uncle Luke and the second car. _Is_ he a secret race car driver? What's there that you're missing? Is it a coincidence that you noticed him looking shifty at the same time he was talking about the second car? You try to remember what else he was talking about, but last night is something of a panicked blur spattered with random details. You can barely remember the gist of what he was saying, let alone the exact wording. Could it have something to do with what he was doing in town? What was he doing in town? You're sure he didn't mention. Could it have nothing to do with any of this? Could he have been looking shifty this whole time, and you just didn't notice because you spend all your time starting at your own feet? Possibly. At the least, there's no limit to what he could be hiding from you. Is it possible you imagined the whole thing? Maybe, you mean, but-- better safe than sorry. But is there anything you can do, at this point? Not really; you've already established this.

(Don't think about Snoke don't think about Snoke don't think about Snoke-- don't think about the terror, the jabs of light, the red splashing in front of your vision, the pulpy bite in your side-- don't think about the endless grey sky above you, the snow seeping bitter through the back of your torn hoodie, the certainty you're going to _die_ here-- and then a shock of orange hair somewhere above you, Hux's panicked shouts, stark and distant against the cold air--

Fuck.)

You roll onto your stomach and stifle a sob in your pillow, then a scream. Your arms feel far too weak and shaky to be real parts of your body. You scream until your sore throat gives out on you, not possessing the will to stop, burning with a need to feel anything but this; and then just cry, whimpering despite the pain it causes your raw throat in long, uneven bursts, til eventually you fall silent, and then you just lie there, noting the texture of the mattress beneath you, the particular dampness of the pillowcase against your face, how much snot you’re getting everywhere. Time passes in one long, dragged-out note. The seconds swim around you. Time doesn’t exist. You don’t exist. You’re in too much pain to possibly move on from this. You can’t think of a future.

Eventually your crying slows, but you still can’t bring yourself to move. Your mind tries to wander, but finds only static. You wonder what will happen if you just lay here, forever. You have to; there’s no other option. 

(The patches that made it through your memory: wet, dark scarlet on your fingers, your own ragged breathing in your ears, your vision at once overly sharp and swimming at the edges. You couldn’t move then, either; were far more certain you would never arrive at anything after.

Why didn’t he kill you? That would’ve been kinder, at this point.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t.)

Your head aches as though it has been clogged, all the inner workings gummed up. You’re terribly overwhelmed by how many thoughts are stuffed in there; wish you could throw some of them out, air out the cluttered, mildewed chambers. You can feel the bad memories taken manifest in your shoulder blades, heavy and gnawing. Your throat hurts; your throat hurts.

(The wand movement, the cold, red in the snow, the sky, the sinking panic, Hux; over and over and over.)

There’s a knock on your bedroom door; the sound of Uncle Luke’s voice. A fresh bolt of terror rips through you and you scream and scramble to sit up and grab your wand-- your wand, your wand, where’d your fucking wand go, _where is it--_ you tear through the covers tangled around you and snatch it up again, eyes wide, breathing heavy, point it at the door--

‘Kylo?’ Uncle Luke sounds-- really fucking concerned, actually. An act, most likely. It’s been an act this whole fucking time, hasn’t it?

(Why is he still, after all this, using your name?

Well. Snoke never stopped, did he.)

‘Kylo, are you--’ he cuts himself off. You can just faintly make out a sigh through the door. ‘Is it okay if I come in, or would you rather I didn’t?’

The option throws you for a loop. You don’t answer. You can’t think of how to answer, for several moments. But he doesn’t speak again. He’s probably waiting for you. You consider the question. It’s easy, thankfully, once you take a moment to parse it. ‘Stay-- stay out.’ Your voice is all funny; scratchy, tear-stained, almost high-pitched. It hurts to talk. You keep your wand trained at the door, just in case he-- just in case.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I, uh. I made pancakes, if you want some.’

He’s trying to lure you out.

‘If you don’t want them right now I can put them in the fridge. Or I can bring them up here, if you want.’

Right, food. That’s. Something that happens to people, and occasionally to you. And pancakes sound really good, actually. But you’re not going down there, and you’re not going to ask him to bring them up. You’re not going to ask him for anything.

You’re silent. He’s probably waiting for you to say something. You’ll have to think of something before he’ll leave. _If_ he’ll leave. He’ll probably come back later with some new device to try to get at you.

But the thing is-- he could come through that door, if he wanted. It’s not locked. (Stupid fucking idiot, why didn’t you at least try to lock the door.) You’re ready to hex him into a billion pieces if he does, if he tries anything, but he doesn’t know that. Or maybe he does; you’re not hard to figure out. Does he really think you’ll stand a chance against him? You’re fifteen, and he saved the world. So what’s he doing? Why hasn’t he come in yet? Why did he even ask if you wanted him to stay out? What’s he doing, _what’s he fucking doing?_

‘Kylo, what’s wrong?’ he asks through the door, and he sounds-- so gentle, so tired, and all the questions in your head explode. Your head feels too full to wrap around anything. You can’t think in words anymore. You can’t do anything. You can’t do anything. You can’t do anything. You can’t do anything. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die. You can’t do anything; you want to die. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die.

You’re still holding your wand.

Suddenly, something occurs to you: a series of images, a series of actions. Trembling, you point your wand away from the door and at yourself; concentrate. ‘Stupefy,’ you say, almost whisper. Your vision sears briefly with red light-- and then it all goes black, and you do not dream.

When you wake up you’re still more or less where you left yourself. Uncle Luke is standing by your bed, and you scramble away from him. Your wand, where’s your wand, fuck-- your darting eyes find it on your bedside table, but you’d have to reach over to get it. 

‘Kylo--’ You look at Uncle Luke. He’s holding his own wand, though it’s not pointed at you - not that that fucking means anything. His face is-- it’s weird, you’ve spent over a week in each other’s company - more, back in England with your parents - and you just now notice you’ve barely looked at his face at all. He looks younger than you were imagining. He looks-- stricken, though that’s too soft a word for it. Terribly scared; terribly sad. You’re halted for a moment, but you’re still so, so scared. It’s strange, how you’re flipping between wanting harm to come to you and being afraid he’ll bring you harm. Fuck, you’re pathetic. Your head hurts a lot.

‘Kylo,’ he repeats, less alarmed now, and closer to that gentle tone from earlier. It’s hurting your head even more to keep focusing on his face, but you don’t know where else to look, other than to dart another glance at your wand. You don’t think you can grab it. You don’t think you can move. His gaze follows yours, and fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, you shouldn’t have done that, and you stare at him in terror, sure this is what you’ve been waiting for--

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he says, but at the same time he moves his wand arm, and you screw your eyes shut, sure the lie will be the last thing you hear--

‘I’m not!’ he says. ‘Promise. Here.’

You open your eyes. He’s holding his wand out to you handle first. It’s shiny black and warm brown, carved in a pattern of various ridges. You blink; hesitate. He doesn’t withdraw. You take the wand from him. It slides easily from his grasp, and he lowers his arm. ‘You can take yours too, I won’t stop you.’ You look at him. He raises his mismatched hands; holds them apart at chest height. You keep your eyes trained on him a moment longer before leaning over and snatching your wand from the bedside table. Once you’re sat back in the corner, he slowly lowers his arms. 

‘What’s this about?’ he asks.

You have to try hard to parse the question. You’re having some difficulty registering any of this as actually happening, or indeed, the life that got you to this point as actually real. You open your mouth. You can’t, in fact, actually quite remember how you got here, not immediately, at least. There was the second car-- he looked shifty about the second car, so you had to find out what he was hiding, so of course he was going to try to stop you. Explaining this sounds far too difficult to cope with right now. Furthermore, you don’t want to expose yourself to him like that; don’t want to let him know you’re onto him. You shut your mouth.

‘Why are you so afraid of me?’ he asks, and you shiver. He sounds _scared._ ‘If there’s something I did, I need to know.’

The feeling that your head is filled with quicksand, that you can’t act and can’t think in words, is back upon you. You try to regain your grip on your understanding of the situation. You know what happened, but what is happening now? He promised not to hurt you, and relinquished the most efficient means to. You have both the wands in your hand. If it came to a physical fight between you, you might actually stand a chance. You’re much bigger than him, and you’ve had lots of practice. Except it wouldn’t come to that, because you have both the wands. You could stun him, and he wouldn’t have the means to block it. Unless he has some trick up his sleeve. He probably does, though you can’t imagine what. A second wand, or something. He could easily be lulling you into a false sense of security. Though you do have an idea: you separate your wand from his, so you have one in each hand, and then, as suddenly as you can muster, lunge your wand arm and say the spell in one movement. ‘Expelliarmus!’

Nothing happens, other than Uncle Luke looking a little more concerned. A lot more concerned. ‘I’m not armed, Kylo. I promise, I’m not going to hurt you. Please, just tell me what I’m doing so I can stop doing it.’

You draw your arms back close to yourself, where you feel more secure. You want to die, you remind yourself. Why are you defending yourself this much, now?

You answer yourself: you may want to die, but you don’t want to hurt. That’s it; that’s always it. The reason you’re suicidal in the first place. You’re so tired, so frightened, of being in pain. It’s a relief, to have untangled this knot, at least; to have figured out what you want. You want to be free of pain. Kill you, but just please don’t hurt you.

But he’s not armed; your spell proved that. You have the upper hand. It’s not like last time; you have a chance to defend yourself. You feel a small surge of power at that: you know what you want, and you have a chance to defend yourself. And he wants to talk, about why you’re afraid. Shouldn’t he know? What does he want from you? A confirmation of sorts? 

Well. You have the upper hand. There’s one way to find out.

‘What are you hiding?’ you ask.

‘What?’

‘What are you hiding, old man?’ you snarl. Fuck, your throat hurts. He raises his hands again; good. You definitely have the upper hand.

‘Kylo, I’m thirty-six.’

You have to take a moment to realise what he means. You’re about to be pissed that he dodged the question, but then he continues. ‘Sorry.’ He lets out a breath. ‘I’m not hiding anything. There’s things I haven’t told you, but that’s because they haven’t come up. You can ask me anything you want. I won’t lie.’

You frown. Of course, if he’s lying now, and if you believe him, he’ll have successfully deflected suspicion. But you can at least hear what he’ll say. ‘What’s going on with the second car?’

‘Oh.’ He lets out another breath, one that holds a small part of a laugh. ‘That. I, uh. I do dirt track racing. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.’

So. He. _Is_ a secret race car driver. Huh. Unless he’s lying, but-- that’s just bizarre. ‘Wait, like, here?’

‘Yeah. There’s a track out in this huge field that we use. It’s not professional, or anything.’

‘We?’

‘Just a bunch of people from the area. It’s not much of a race if you’re by yourself.’

‘Is that what you were doing last night?’

‘Yeah.’ He makes that nervous breath-laugh sound again, goes a bit pink on the edges. ‘I know it’s dangerous to do during a storm, but you’ve gotta get your thrills somehow, right?’

You... really know what he means, actually. It’s weird, feeling for a moment like you understand him. And you don’t _feel_ like he’s lying. Not that you’re very good at telling.

‘Is that what this is about?’

He sounds so fucking gentle, it makes you feel sick. You don’t know if you should answer him. You have the wands, but you still feel cornered, like an animal. You’re the one with teeth, but he’s the one with the keys to your cage. And here he is, acting all soft, all trustworthy, all fucking _sympathetic--_

‘Hey, hey,’ he says, as you start crying again.

‘What do you want from me?’ you ask, voice all pathetic, all wibbly, switching back to holding both wands in one hand so you can wipe your eyes.

‘I... Nothing. I’m not trying to get anything from you. I’m just... I’m just trying to understand.’

You sob. There’s so, so much _you_ don’t understand.

‘I just want to know what needs to happen for this to be a safe place for you.’

‘Why?’ you choke out. You catch a glimpse of his face again by mistake, and wish you hadn’t. He looks heartbroken. He looks like your mum did basically every time you spoke to her last spring. That’s why you stopped talking to her, in the end. You wish these random people, with whom you happen to share a biological link, would stop _caring_ so much.

...Oh.

‘I care about you?’ he says, right as you think it. There’s still so many questions that leaves unanswered.

‘Why, though?’

‘I don’t know, basic human decency? You’re hurting. Something terrible happened to you, and you’re in pain, and. I thought I could help.’

You blink at him, processing this. ‘So, what, as soon as I’m better you’re going to go back to not giving two shits? You’re going to be here a long time, because that’s _never fucking happening.’_ You snarl the last part, though you don’t mean to, this time. He’s right, you’re in pain, you’re in pain. This is what you wanted so badly to stop.

‘That’s not it at all. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it. I’m sorry that I didn’t build a real relationship with you before now, I’m sorry that we were both moving around so much. I’m sorry that so much has happened to you that you have to ask me these questions. I’m sorry for whatever I did to scare you; I’m sorry that I can’t do a better job comforting you now. I’m sorry for everyone that’s failed you. I’m sorry that I’m one of those people. I’m sorry for so many things, and I’m just trying to fix them. Seeing people in pain causes me pain, and, and families are supposed to support each other, and god, Kylo, you’re hurt and I could help. I don’t know what else I can say about it.’

You’re still for a very long time. You don’t know what you feel, anymore.

‘Kylo?’ Uncle Luke asks, small, still so very gentle.

‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ you whimper.

‘It’s wrong to not call you that,’ he says. ‘It’s your name.’

You sob. Everything, it feels like, has just come crashing down around your ears. The last-- however many hours, all your suspicions about him, all your fear, it’s all falling down, trapping you underneath. You want to believe him. You’re not willing to believe him. It’d be so much easier if this was all an act. It’d be so much easier-- god, why can’t things be easier. Why can’t things be easier. 

‘Hey, I’ll be right back, okay?’

You look up to watch him go, watch him pick his way across your clothing piles. He must not’ve noticed the skirt among the rest of all the black fabric. The door is open. He leaves it that way. He’s back in a few seconds with the tissue box from the table in the hallway. ‘Do you want the door open or closed?’ he asks.

‘Closed.’ It’s just habit. You feel safer that way. There’s less open space for you to take into account.

He closes the door, makes his way back over to you, offers you the tissues with a soft ‘Here.’ You take them. ‘Can I sit down?’ he asks. You nod; there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He sits at the foot of the bed while you blow your nose. He’s quiet for a long time. So are you, apart from all the sniffling. You’re not doing any better of a job of figuring out-- anything, really. Your brain is both far too full and far too empty to do any actual thinking. You let out a couple of loud, whining sobs despite yourself. You’re so tired. You’re just so tired. You just want all of this to stop. You don’t care how. You just want it to be over. You just want to rest.

Eventually your crying slows. You’ve used up nearly the entire box of tissues. Uncle Luke is looking at his knees, or maybe at the floor. 

‘Hey, Kylo?’ he says eventually.

‘What?’ you croak.

‘Please don’t knock yourself out again.’

Something painful bites at your chest.

‘That was really terrifying. You could’ve seriously hurt yourself.’

‘I don’t care,’ you say. It’s a lie, and something in your chest and shoulders feels wrong after you say it.

He looks at you. You look at your lap. ‘I do,’ he says.

‘How-- how long was I out for?’ you ask, because you’re wondering.

‘Only a minute or so. I revived you.’

That would. That would be why he was holding his wand, when you woke up.

‘Do you think-- at some point, can you tell me what you were afraid of? It doesn’t have to be right now. I just want to know so I can avoid freaking you out like that.’

You sniffle. Will you tell him? You don’t know. You don’t know anything right now. You’re always so fucking wrong about everything, there’s no point trying to figure it out.

Your stomach growls loudly. ‘Do you want to go get some pancakes?’ Uncle Luke asks. 

‘Okay.’ You feel like you've given up, somehow, but you're too tired to do anything else. Doing what other people tell you is easy, and you hate it, but it's what happening right now. He gets up; you, with some effort to disentangle your legs from the covers, follow suit. You feel incredibly unsteady on your feet. You realise with a stab of fear that Uncle Luke was sitting right across from where your skirt is. But maybe he was looking at his knees; maybe it's harder to pick out among all your other clothing if you don't already know it's there. Maybe it's too late. Why didn't you put it away last night? Why didn't you get up and put it away this morning?

(You fucking know why.)

But he hasn't reacted, and he doesn't still, just steps over it like it's nothing, so you probably got lucky and he didn't notice. Or, says a little voice in the back of your head, he doesn't care. Phasma’s grandparents have never had a problem with her being a girl. But that sort of acceptance-- it just doesn't happen to you. And-- and you don't know, if you're a girl, and that seems entirely more difficult to explain.

At Hogwarts it didn't matter. You thought, at first, that some of the teachers would have a problem, but you encountered no difficulties that couldn't be solved by pointing out you were technically adhering to the uniform. And you got a lot of comments, and a lot of shit for it, yeah, but not from anyone with real power over you. Not from anyone who _mattered._ And it died down quickly, for the most part. Hux and Phasma asked about it, about your gender, once apiece, and you told them truthfully that you didn't know, and that was that. _That's fair,_ Phasma had said, and Hux had nodded and said, _let me know if anything changes._ Or something like that. You don't remember exactly.

But Uncle Luke is in a position to make you stop, and you don't want to risk that. It's so much harder to hide something from someone when they know to look for it, and you're so very bad at lying. You're not Hux. You couldn't-- well, maybe you could, if you'd been practicing all your life. But you haven't, because you're _not_ Hux, and you definitely wouldn't be able to maintain a ruse of his caliber now, not on top of everything else.

You idle by the pillar that marks the corner of the kitchen while Uncle Luke sticks a plate heaping with pancakes in the microwave. ‘You can go sit down, I’ll bring everything out,’ he says. You go over to the dining room table and sit down at the end. This is the same place you sat on the first night you were here. You weren't thinking about it at the time, but by sitting there you established it as your Spot, and it's where you've been sitting since. Uncle Luke, too, has been sticking to the same seat, for which you're grateful. You sit at either ends of the table, his back to the cabinets, yours to the window, perpendicular to the room at large. It's not a huge table, it's not as if you're sitting a ridiculous distance away from each other like a rich but dissatisfied married couple in an overly dramatic film. But you do feel like you have plenty of space to maneuver before you encroach on his, for which you are also grateful. 

As you sit there, disinterestedly studying the grain of the table and waiting for pancakes to arrive, your attention falls upon the salt and pepper shakers, the ones shaped like little coffee pots. You take one and look at it. It's salt, or at least labelled as such. You shake a little into your hand and lick it. It's salt. You look over at Uncle Luke in the kitchen. He's currently looking in the fridge. You're still holding both of the wands. He hasn't asked for his back. Is he still willing to answer your questions?

You wait til he finishes loading the table with pancakes and accoutrements, turning over potential wordings in your mind, mildly distracted by all the things he's setting in front of you: syrup, strawberries, blackberries, sliced banana, whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles you're pretty sure you made him buy, the chocolate shavings he put on your hot chocolate the first night you were here. ‘What do you want to drink?’ he asks as he sets an empty plate in front of you.

‘Chocolate milk,’ you say because you don't know, and a dare is the first thing you think of. It's not any real sort of challenge; if he doesn't care if you have chocolate milk with Cocoa Puffs he's not gonna care if you have it with pancakes. You just can't bring yourself to spend brainpower on such a question right now. He sets this ugly little mug with a kitten on it by the corner of your plate. 

‘Help yourself,’ he says, as he begins to fork pancakes onto his plate. You don’t, even after he goes and sits down in his usual place. Your brain is working on other stuff. The words burn on your tongue as you think about them. He’s willing to talk; he’s shown that. There’s no reason you shouldn’t ask. Your jaw is cemented shut.

‘What’s with the salt and pepper shakers?’ you ask at long last. It sounds far too mundane a question for how much effort you had to put into asking it, you think. It may be your voice saying it - or a tear and sore throat addled version of such - but it doesn’t feel like the words are really coming out of your mouth. Someone else is sitting where you are and making these noises.

‘What? Oh. I collect them. And I like all of them so much, I can never decide which to use.’

That makes sense, you guess. ‘So, what, do you just like. Dump all the salt and pepper from one to the other every night?’

He laughs a little. ‘Not every night. But yeah.’

You suddenly feel very small and silly. He’s the one who’s being silly, objectively, but-- you were scared of it. You look at your plate, then realise for the first time that you could add pancakes to it. You do so and pile a bunch of random bullshit on top, not really thinking about what will taste good so much as what exists in front of you. 

He-- he said he was sorry, that he failed you. But you’re the one who fucked up. You should’ve told somebody sooner, even if it was just Hux and Phasma. You shouldn’t have confronted Snoke. You shouldn’t have trusted Snoke in the first place. You should’ve sensed it on him, or something; you should’ve trusted all the kids who called him creepy. You shouldn’t’ve felt so defensive of creepy things in the first place. It’s not normal, to want to be something dark. You’ve seen what dark looks like, and you still want to be something like it.

But he said he was sorry, that he failed you. As if it’s somehow his fault. He probably wasn’t even in the country at the time. Maybe not even the continent. There’s no way he could have done anything. No way he could’ve known something needed to be done in the first place. What was he apologising for? You try to think back, to the rest of what he said. Your memory feels blurry as though tear-stained. Your head hurts. _Seeing people in pain causes me pain, and families support each other, and you’re hurt and I thought I could help._ Those were things he said, more or less, but that doesn’t help you answer the question. And it wasn’t families support each other, you correct yourself. It was families are _supposed_ to support each other. That’s important, you think, the distinction.

You’re still holding both the wands; you served yourself pancakes one-handed. The question swells uncomfortable in your mouth.

‘What were you apologising for?’ you ask. It comes out quiet. ‘Earlier,’ you clarify, though it isn’t a very good clarification. 

You hear him still, and chance a slow look upwards. He looks thoughtful. ‘You’ve gone through so much,’ he says, eventually, ‘And you haven’t had adults backing you up. Me, your parents, your teachers, everyone-- we’re supposed to help you handle the world. We’re supposed to take on the things you can’t, until you can. You shouldn’t have had to handle this on your own. But you didn't have anyone to go to, and you got hurt. I could've been that person. Anyone could've been that person, but I'm the one whose actions I can control. I should've been there for you from the beginning. You should've had someone you could go to.’

You cow, burning with guilt. The whipped cream is beginning to soak into your pancakes. He's blaming himself when it's your fault for not going to anyone--

‘I don't mean as a poor reflection on you,’ he says with timing almost frighteningly synced with your thoughts, and you look up again. ‘It's our fault for pushing you away, for making you feel like you couldn't get help. It’s not your fault, Kylo. Nothing that happened was your fault.’

‘I should’ve gone to someone,’ you mumble, tucking back into yourself. ‘I was being stupid.’

‘You didn’t have anyone to go to.’

He’s right, for the most part. You did have Hux and Phasma, though, and they did save your skin, in the end. What would going to an adult even have done? They probably wouldn’t have believed you. Snoke’s one of them, after all. You’re just some miscreant. You’re also very hungry, as you suddenly realise, and set down the wands in exchange for your knife and fork and begin carving away at your pancakes. They’re not half bad. They’re really good, actually, in your pancake experience. 

But the thing is-- you wouldn’t have. Gone to anyone, you mean. What he’s saying doesn’t make sense. There were plenty of teachers who you knew weren’t bad, who would have listened, even if they wouldn’t have believed you. And it wouldn’t have helped anything, even if you had, because they _wouldn’t_ have believed you. It’d have been your word against Snoke’s. The word of a scruffy, notoriously disagreeable fifteen year old nobody likes against that of the powerful, influential, esteemed spellcasting teacher. And how were you to know, that they weren’t in league with him? That every teacher in the school wasn’t in on it? That you wouldn’t have suffered a similar attack at any of their hands, once they knew you were onto them?

And if Uncle Luke had been there-- well. You wouldn’t have gone to him. Even if you did, he still wouldn’t have believed you.

You’re shaking violently, doubled over with your hair hanging in your pancakes. The lights above the table flicker. ‘Kylo?’ Uncle Luke asks. You slowly force yourself upwards. His face is hard to see, through your hair and oddly blurry vision. He’s hard to focus on. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he says again. ‘I mean it.’

‘Stop trying to take the blame,’ you growl. Your voice is even creakier than before. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t-- you don’t know what went on.’

He opens his mouth, closes it again. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.’

You expect him to continue, to have an and or but, to try to defend himself somehow. He doesn’t. The silence that follows is uncomfortable and stretching, but as it goes on, you realise he just genuinely apologised to you, no bullshit attached. You look down at your pancakes, and after a moment force your hands away from where they settled tucked in against your chest to pick up your knife and fork again. Your forearms feel strange, almost painful, and you have an intense and inexplicable desire to return them to position, like you’re something elastic that’s been bent out of shape. You don’t do it, because you’re hungry, though after a moment you do. The weird feeling goes away. 

You continue to eat like this, in short bursts, which you’re aware must look strange, but Uncle Luke doesn’t comment. Even with the pauses, it doesn’t take you long to devour this and an additional stack of pancakes. 

Your mind drifts back to Uncle Luke’s request. He wanted to know what he did to scare you so he can avoid doing it again, or so he claims. He probably just wants to know where the holes in his secrets lie. But he said, also, that you could ask him anything, and that doesn’t match up. He hasn’t brushed anything you asked him off yet, or if he has, you haven’t noticed. You can’t trust your own perceptions of these things, you know you can’t.

But what harm would there be in telling him? You can’t think of anything. There are likely things you haven’t thought of. Your head feels as though it has been stuffed with something. Mucous, or maybe gravel. Thinking feels like wading through molasses. Your brain feels like it’s trying to push its way out of your skull in multiple directions. You want, again, nothing more than to shut down completely.

‘Is there something you’d like to do today?’ Uncle Luke asks, which is another question entirely. You did want to go to the coffee shop to visit Phasma, but you really don’t want to go anywhere right now. Or do anything, for that matter. Die. You want to die. You know you can’t say this, though. You shrug.

If he asks again, you’ll tell him, you think. Maybe. Leave it up to chance-- only, no, you’d be leaving it up to him, and you’re not comfortable with that. You need to be in control. You desperately want to not to have to be in control. You wish Phasma or Hux was here, just to tell you what to do. To have an idea of what they wanted to do today that you could feel okay going along with. To have a second opinion you could borrow as your own on whether or not to tell him. You wish Phasma or Hux, or optimally both, were here so you wouldn’t have to do anything today. You could all just sit around together, staring at the walls or ceiling or at each other, listening to music and sharing any random thoughts that cross your mind. Unlike at Hogwarts, you’d have your mp3 player, so you wouldn’t be left at the mercy of the radio. You’d get to share what you like to listen to with them.

You already shared it with Hux, earlier - the first night you came here, lying on your bed and looking at the ceiling, sharing your earphones between the two of you - but Phasma, Phasma would have real appreciation for all of this. She’s familiar with some muggle rock from like, the 70s or something, the few records her grandparents own. You’d love to show her modern rock, pop, heavy metal. All three of them would suit her, in different ways, and you can imagine her sitting on your bed sideways and leaning back against the wall, wrists resting on her propped knees, and flopping her head over to the side to tell you lazily, _I like this,_ and oh, Uncle Luke is talking. You look at him. He’s looking at you like he’s waiting for an answer. You shrug, and hope it’s vaguely grammatically appropriate. 

He-- doesn’t quite sigh, but there’s a moment where you feel like he’s going to. ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’

You look at the wands next to your plate. You have more questions, you’re sure of it, but you can’t think of them off the top of your head. ‘It doesn’t have to be right now,’ he continues. ‘You can ask me anything whenever.’

You have a sudden mental image of yourself standing next to Uncle Luke’s bed at three in the morning, waking him up to ask him something incredibly abstract and inane. Something like _do horses go the same place as humans when they die?_ or _what’s your favourite flavour of jam? what’s your_ second _favourite flavour of jam?_ Fortunately your face isn’t making expressions enough for you to laugh right now. Fuck, though-- _if there were two guys on the moon, and one of them killed the other with a rock, would that be fucked up or what?_ Fuck, okay, you’re laughing. Uncle Luke looks really nonplussed, and that’s even funnier, and you’re laughing harder, and fuck, he probably thinks you’re such a fucking weirdo, but you are, you really are, and you can’t stop laughing. It’s not even that funny. It’s funny, but it’s not _that_ funny, and now you’re crying, you’re crying and you can’t stop laughing.

‘..Are you okay?’ Uncle Luke asks. He sounds really fucking concerned, and that’s funny too.

‘No,’ you choke out. ‘No, I’m really not.’ Okay, shit, everything about this is funny. You don’t know what the fuck is happening. You’re doubled over the table, your hair dangling in the syrup remnants and getting even sticker. Your throat feels as though it’s been through a cheese grater, and your laughter is only making it worse.

‘Deep breaths,’ Uncle Luke says. ‘Just-- breathe, Kylo.’ You try to do as he says, but you are physically incapable of not laughing. There’s nothing even funny about this anymore. You just can’t stop laughing. Fuck, you can’t stop laughing, and you’re choking on it. You’re trapped here.

It takes you a few minutes to peter out. Your abdomen is in pain. You never want to use your throat again. You sit back up. Uncle Luke is looking at you with just as much concern as he showed back in your bedroom, and you clap a hand to your mouth to stop yourself laughing again, because that’s fucking hilarious.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks again, and you nod, even if it isn’t true, because you did manage to stop laughing and that’s a definite improvement. You cautiously lower your hand from your mouth. You don’t know what the fuck just happened, but you’re glad it’s over. You wipe your eyes. ‘What just happened?’ he asks cautiously.

‘Sorry,’ you say. Shit, your voice sounds as bad as it feels. ‘I thought of a meme.’

‘Oh.’ He sounds like he’s going to laugh, now, but doesn’t. ‘Are you feeling alright? Your voice has been scratchy all morning.’

You shrug.

‘Do you want some tea? It might help.’

That sounds... really nice, actually. But you just shrug again. You wish Hux or Phasma were here to be the one offering you tea. You would feel okay accepting their help. But-- but they’re not, and imagining the process Hux might go through to map out the kitchen or how Phasma’s hands feel carding through your hair won’t help anything. No matter how much you think of them they will not be summoned, and for a moment you feel so lonely you want to start crying again. Just accept the damn tea from Uncle Luke, you tell yourself. It’d be the same tea either way, and all you’d be doing would be taking advantage of an offer. Fuck, why are you like this. Why are you tearing up again. Can’t you do anything but cry? You were laughing your ass off a minute ago at something that wasn’t even funny, you pathetic little shit.

You mean to say okay, but the word wavers on the tip of your tongue and you can’t seem to open your mouth, so you just swallow it. Across the table, Uncle Luke looks tired under the ever-present mask of concern. The weight of everything on your mind bears down on you. You remember times when your head was empty of all thoughts but sensation. Why can’t that befall you now? Why couldn’t Uncle Luke have left you knocked out on your bed in peace? He can’t be enjoying this. You both would’ve been better off, if he’d just let you be.

But, the little voice in the back of your head says, if he had you wouldn’t have had that conversation. You wouldn’t have had your chance to ask him all those questions. You wouldn’t have his wand, now. You’d still be scared of him.

You tell yourself you don’t care; that all you want right now is unconsciousness, whatever the cost. You don’t think you could sleep right now without the aid of magic. Maybe if you went back up there and left him down here you could knock yourself out again without him noticing.

But-- if nothing else, you are glad, that you’re not so scared anymore. Though the good thing about fear is that it is all encompassing, and in a blind panic you would not be worrying so much about everything else. It is, however, very hard to maintain for any period of time, and-- resolution is better than a lack thereof. At least you don’t feel the second car is anything worth worrying about anymore. It’s kind of silly, really, that you were so scared. What the fuck did you think he was hiding, anyway? You can’t remember.

Uncle Luke has gotten up and started to clear the table. He hasn’t asked you for help. You watch him dully for a moment before letting your head drop to stare at the edge of the table. It wasn’t anything specific you thought he was hiding, you’re pretty sure, but the concept that he was hiding things. There’s really no limit to the possibilities.

Except-- this is Luke Skywalker, beloved friend, doting uncle, and saviour of the wizarding world. What’s he going to be hiding? You’re silly; you’re stupid; you’re paranoid.

Or what if it’s that he’s got to have _some_ skeletons in the closet, being that good. What if it’s that anyone’s only that perfect cause they hide all their sins away.

What if you let him get away with it.

You’re so tired. 

You shut your eyes for a long moment; breathe in, breathe out. Open them to find the world seems much more saturated than you remember it being. The table is a warm brown, lighter and redder than the handle of Uncle Luke’s wand, and not as glossy, the grain easily distinguishable. The ceiling lamp casts a warm, bright glow over everything. Uncle Luke takes your plate away, leaves the unfinished chocolate milk. His prosthetic is yet another new colour in the world of bright medium browns, the grain subtle and swirling. It must have been hard, you think, relearning use of a dominant hand no longer of your flesh and blood. Or maybe it wasn’t. Does it feel any different at all? If you’ve ever asked you were too young to remember doing so. Your eyes stray to the wands. This dull curiosity isn’t worth the energy it takes to ask a question. 

In a sudden surge of energy you snatch up the wands again and knock back the remaining chocolate milk. ‘I’m going to make myself tea, you can have some if you want,’ Uncle Luke says from the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ you say, surprised afterwards at your ability to speak. It’s a ploy, and a poorly disguised one at that, but you’re actually okay with that. You’ll drink tea if he puts it in front of you. Or you can get your own damn tea. You approximately know how the kitchen works by this point. You wonder if he has any honey, or just sugar. Maybe you made him buy honey. You think you did, actually, because it was in a bottle shaped like a little bear and that was hilarious to you, at least at the time. He definitely has pepper, which is a trick Hux taught you and which you’re somewhat partial to. The two taste good together in most kinds of tea, at least in your experience.

You wipe your eyes, though you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re crying about anymore. There’s just too much.

You sit there for what feels like a very long time. You don’t really feel capable of movement. When Uncle Luke asks what kind of tea you want, you answer noncommittally, and when he lists off the types available, you pick somewhat at random. You only think to ask him for honey once he’s already brought your cup over, and have decided to go without when he places the cup in front of you and you notice: on the edge of the saucer rests a little dish filled with honey.

You wipe your eyes again.

‘I’m gonna be in the sun room,’ Uncle Luke says. ‘Feel free to use the TV; movies and games are in the cabinet under the stairs.’

You hear his footsteps bring him down the hallway and through a door, creaky like all the rest. It takes you a few moments to set about adding honey and pepper to your tea, and then you just slowly stir it for longer than is necessary. It’s still very warm when you drink it, though, and the warmth fills your chest and stomach and presses comfort against your hands. It feels so, so nice on your damaged throat, nothing like the burning that accompanies a healing spell. There are ways to heal without hurting, you think. Shit, that sounds super poetic. Maybe you should write that down.

You look over at the television and the sofa before it, which might actually be long enough for you to stretch out on. The green throw blanket is draped over the back. Maybe you’ll go check out Uncle Luke’s movie collection, once you have the wherewithal to rise.

(The couch is unreasonably comfortable when properly settled down upon, you discover, and you soon accomplish what you thought impossible and drift back into sleep.)

There are mismatch hands carding through your hair: slender and clever, square and steady, or perhaps carved and enchanted from rich, warm wood. _Don’t fret,_ says a voice, soft and comforting, and you think perhaps you know who it belongs to but find you are utterly unconcerned with the prospect of confirmation. _Don’t worry. Someone else will take care of this. The hard part is over. You’re safe._

When you wake the DVD menu is playing on repeat, and someone has draped the throw blanket over you while you slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [Love Like You.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F8HvKqnp5s)
> 
> My tumblr can be found [here](http://steamworkblue.tumblr.com/); feel free to drop me a line anytime.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wander the Boundaries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6917533) by [geneticus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geneticus/pseuds/geneticus)




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